HP dings IBM on server speed test

After a drubbing at the hands of IBM on a server speed test, the leader of Hewlett-Packard's high-end server group launched at counterattack at Big Blue on his blog Monday. Rich Marcello, though, missed an opportunity to attack the speed test itself.

In November, IBM's new p5-595 server nearly tripled the number of transactions per minute that HP's top-end Superdome could perform on a speed test called TPC-C. But Marcello questioned the usefulness of IBM's accomplishment.

"The result has little real-world significance," Marcello said. He presented several reasons: The next-generation "Montecito" version of Intel's Itanium processor, to be used in a forthcoming Superdome model, beat out IBM's Power5 processor in the Microprocessor Report's award of server processor of the year. Power5 is expensive. IBM's test system used the company's DB2 database software, even though many customers use Oracle's. It used huge amounts of expensive memory. It used the newest edition of IBM's version of Unix, AIX 5.3, for which all software isn't yet optimized. And HP's Superdome fares quite well on a number of other tests.

Perhaps. It's hard to blame IBM too much for choosing the latest hardware and software to run its tests, even if its $16.7 million system cost twice as much as HP's $8.3 million machine. And while IBM may have indeed have ventured far from customer practices by using a gargantuan 2 terabytes of memory, HP wasn't far behind with 1 terabyte.

Marcello's blog describes how the executive's rhetorical prowess triumphs over the customer's doubts. A more surprising and helpful conclusion might have been a call for a better speed test.

Sun Microsystems was the first to drop out of the TPC-C race, calling the test obsolete. IBM offered an alternative benchmark in 2004, the Virtualization Grand Slam. That benchmark measures how well a server handles multiple jobs simultaneously, a very relevant idea, given that today's mammoth servers can be divided into separate independent partitions.

HP itself agrees with this direction. Brian Cox, product line manager for HP's high-end servers, said he also wants this approach to speed tests. Almost no customers run today's biggest servers for a single job, he said.

Every benchmark grows out of date, and it's good there's work under way to give customers a more useful yardstick. Maybe Marcello's next blog posting will describe some alternatives to TPC-C, not just to IBM.

I.B.M. Steals the Spotlight Ahead of H.P.’s Big Day

I.B.M. has lobbed a preemptive strike of sorts against rival Hewlett-Packard. Late Thursday, it announced four fresh services contracts just ahead of a Monday meeting in Silicon Valley where H.P. is expected to explain the strategy and structure for its new acquisition, Electronic Data Systems.

The flurry of announcements marks the start of a protracted marketing and technology battle between the technology industry’s largest companies.

One of the deals secured by I.B.M. took place in the Philippines with PSBank, the second largest savings bank in the country. I.B.M. was eager to point out that the bank shifted from an Oracle database running on H.P.’s hardware to performing its online transaction processing on an I.B.M. mainframe.

The other deals included a seven-year outsourcing agreement with the PTT Chemical Public Company of Thailand, a new data center for Saigon Commercial Bank in Vietnam and a technology agreement with Skynet in Lithuania around Internet protocol television, or IPTV.

I.B.M. was not terribly subtle about celebrating the international flair of its services and technology expertise. But it’s not really subtlety that the company is after when it comes to H.P. and the services battlefield.

“HP will claim next week that they have some great new capabilities,” said David Parker, the vice president of strategy for I.B.M. Global Services. “I will be surprised if they are able to be very specific about that. It is still yesterday’s business model.”

At H.P.’s Monday meeting, the company make its E.D.S. pitch to securities analysts. Chief executive Mark Hurd and other top H.P. executives plan to explain why the $14 billion acquisition makes sense and what kinds of internal changes will take place now that the purchase has been completed.

Since the megadeal was first announced, industry observers have been quick to question why HP would want to take on a business with 140,000 employees and lackluster financial results. Meanwhile, H.P. sees E.D.S. as a way to add weight to its services lineup and, well, give I.B.M. a harder time.

Without a doubt, the E.D.S. acquisition establishes the services realm as the next big battleground for I.B.M. and H.P. –- both of which look to make money off customers introducing new technology projects as well as those consolidating their infrastructures.

I.B.M. continues to argue that it is in unmatched in its combination of vast experience and research and development. H.P. is just adding more bodies and still lacks the consulting muscle needed to compete on a global scale, according to Mr. Parker.

H.P. will, of course, be sure to take its counter crack at I.B.M. next week.