"Wow, you wake up and it's a whole new world," said a visibly surprised Richard Fichera , an analyst at Forrester to the news that for 2.3 billion dollars, the x86 server division of IBM to the Chinese manufacturer Lenovo.
In addition to all x86 appliances, rack and blade servers, Lenovo also has licensed access to IBM software and hardware such as SmartCloud Entry, Storeware, Director, Platform Computing or even GPFS. At the same time, IBM will continue to source this hardware as an OEM to bring appliances under its own name to the market. As announced yesterday, IBM will retain the higher-margin mainframes (System z) and all power-based products.
Fichera, however, sees little to no consequences for the users, unlike Gartner, for example: "This will be largely an almost invisible and non-disruptive trasition for most Nordamerkia and European IBM server customers. My expectation here is that both companies will vote this transition quickly, and the intact IBM management and ground personnel will do it well for the customer. "He now sees significantly more options for Lenovo users. However, Lenovo currently only holds around one percent of the market for servers. Of course, this is very different in other markets, such as China. However, according to Fichera, the total volume of the market will not change as a result.
Already yesterday, the Gartner analyst Errol Rasit commented that although he does not expect major upheavals, but still many questions will be asked, especially in support and also in the feature roadmap.
"In the medium term, there will be little change for channel partners and users in Europe," says IDC server specialist and research manager Giorgio Nebuloni in an email. Lenovo is even stronger than IBM a channel-driven company.
Nearly all server sales are currently handled indirectly at Lenovo. However, users and channel partners should take advantage of this phase, according to Nebuloni, to examine the long-term strategy for "infrastructure consumption". In addition to on-prem, off-premisses, managed hosting or even cloud solutions could be offered here.
The increased use of enterprise cloud and hosting models may also have been a reason why IBM has sold this business. IBM, the undisputed leader in mainframes and Unix / Power systems, only scores 13 percent behind x86 in Europe, behind HP and Dell. In addition, IBM has not pursued this area for some time very aggressive. IDC expects manufacturers to generate 15 to 20 percent margins here. High-end systems, on the other hand, have lower unit volumes, but margins between 40 and 50 percent can be seen here. Software can even wave up to 70 percent margin.
"On paper, this deal seems to fit into the strategy of both companies. Lenovo can diversify from the core PC business to higher value offerings and IBM can continue on its path to becoming a cloud provider, "said Nebuloni. But it will be interesting at the interfaces. For example, in some environments, some x86 blades would have replaced old Unix installations. Also on such installations run important corporate core processes.
"IBM only owns the power-based blades, so both will probably need to maintain a long-term partnership," Nebuloni continued. Also, some users currently have mixed system landscapes from x86, power or mainframe or even storage components that IBM already keeps. "We do not know the details of this sale at the moment, but as we know, the devil is literally in there." Gartner analyst Rasit sees the deal as more of a partner agreement. This could also be the comparatively low price.