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Storage Wars in tight economy: HP and IBM battle as EMC, Sun languish

So, Big Blue cranked up its PR machine, and pulled some statistics out of its, er, sales database and wanted everyone to know that more than 5,000 companies worldwide have replaced iron from HP, Sun Microsystems, and EMC since 2004 and moved to them to IBM alternatives.

Breaking this down a little, IBM is claiming that in less than one year, more than 150 customers have moved onto its System z mainframes from HP and Sun platforms. When pressed for more details about where these customers were coming from, IBM's PR people said they would get me some answers, but all I got was static. And since the inception of the so-called Migration Factory that IBM set up "several years ago," more than 1,300 customers have been moved to Power-based servers from Sun and HP platforms, and this year alone, another 800 customers have moved onto System x iron (which presumably also includes BladeCenter blade servers).

Yes, IBM is mixing different categories and different time scales, but this is what happens when people bicker. On the storage front, IBM says that since 2006, it has moved over 2,900 customers from EMC iron. (Any minute now, EMC will pipe up with how many IBM, HP, and Sun takeouts it has garnered).

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