Sun Uses Financial Incentives To Lure HP Alpha Customers

Sun's HP Away program targets more than 400,000 HP customers that need 64-bit computing but are being directed by HP to migrate to its Itanium-based server platforms, said Larry Singer, vice president of global market strategies at Sun, Santa Clara, Calif.

The company is betting the hassle involved in the transition from DEC's Alpha platform to the newer Intel Itanium-based systems will be enough to convince customers to give Solaris a try. Singer said it is not easy for customers to move from the Alpha RISC platform to Itanium, as the differences between the two platforms are huge. Sun's Solaris platform remains focused on a RISC architecture.

Under the HP Away program, Sun will offer HP's Alpha/Tru64 clients a two-week migration assessment service at no charge, even if the customer decides not to proceed with the migration to Solaris. In addition, Sun will defer payments for the entire migration--including Sun services, software and servers--until the task is complete, or for a maximum of 90 days. The company will also offer enhanced financing and trade-in programs for such companies.

"We are using pretty aggressive financing, so customers can move to Sun without capital spending," said Singer. "They can get the Sun equipment out of their current spending."

Solution providers said Sun's program opens new opportunities for customers that need to migrate off the Alpha platform.

Ed Gogol, director of enterprise systems at Solarcom, a Norcross, Ga.-based solution provider, said he talked to legacy DEC customers a year ago about migration issues, but at the time they were sure the new HP would come up with a migration plan.

"The issue a year ago was, 'Why should we, the customer, do this now?' " Gogol said. "Customers saw the merger coming, and figured HP should have a path for them. We were ahead of the curve [last year]."

However, now is a better time to approach legacy Alpha/Tru64 customers, especially with the new support from Sun, said Gogol.

"If we get more national backing and programs like [HP Away] from Sun, we will approach those companies again. . . . I've always thought this was a good idea," he said. "Sun is not exaggerating when it says there are 400,000 potential migration clients out there."

Hank Johnson, vice president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group at Dallas-based Stonebridge Technologies, said that Sun has been talking about such a program for some time.

For a company looking to make a change, Sun is an obvious alternative, Johnson said. "Sun has an intriguing story about cost of ownership with Solaris, as well as with its software stack," he said. "As a major Sun partner, I'm thrilled about it."

Clabby Analytics, a Concord, Mass.-based research firm, agreed in a white paper it published on June 30 that HP customers face a multitude of issues when considering migrating to the Itanium platform in general.

Such issues include the maturity and the reliability, availability and scalability (RAS) of the Itanium vs. RISC platforms; lack of performance guidelines for Itanium-based apps, which are both run natively and via compilers; and Intel's claim that there are 300 packaged applications ported to Itanium 2 vs. more than 10,000 for HP's PA-RISC, IBM's Power and Sun's UltraSPARC platforms.

Clabby Analytics concluded that, while some HP customers will invest in porting applications to Itanium-class systems, the majority will either keep their PA-RISC-based servers for years or will evaluate other platforms.

Specifically, the research firm believes IBM's Power architecture will be the big winner as Linux and other Intel-based servers erode Sun's UltraSPARC base, forcing that vendor to consider introducing a new 64-bit platform.

HP, Palo Alto, Calif., delined to comment on the program, but Mark Hudson, vice president of marketing for HP enterprise storage and servers, offered this response in an e-mail to CRN:

"HP does have comprehensive and coordinated companywide programs in place to aggressively pursue and migrate customers from Sun and IBM systems to HP systems, and we have been very successful in doing so. However, we are not actively publicizing these as marketing programs as our focus continues to remain on execution."

Singer said that while HP Away is targeting Alpha/Tru64 customers, it will eventually target other HP-UX customers as well. "These are people who are typically loyal, and who don't want to change," he said. "But HP told them they have to change."

For Sun, which is on the lookout for new revenue sources, the forced migration comes at an ideal time, said Singer. "HP is opening its vault of customers and saying, 'Here's new business, come and get it,' " he said.

The HP Away program was so named as a play on the old "HP Way" of doing business, Singer said. "HP spent all this money to acquire Compaq and DEC, and then said to customers, 'We no longer want to support you,' " he said. "That's so unlike the old HP, which took care of customers."