Hewlett-Packard has cut prices for its midrange Unix servers by about 20 percent, in an attempt to thwart renewed competition from rivals Sun Microsystems and IBM.
The price cuts, which HP intends to announce Thursday, apply to the eight-processor rp4705 and rp7410 systems and to the 16-processor rp8400, said Dimitris Dovas, an HP manager for midrange servers.
At the same time, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has expanded its capacity-on-demand system, which should improve how computers respond to abruptly increasing work loads and make it possible for buyers to better customize their systems.
HP leads the market for Unix servers costing between $100,000 and $1 million, according to researcher IDC, garnering $3 billion in revenue in 2002. The No. 2 seller, IBM, took in $2 billion, while third-place Sun racked up $1.6 billion. HP has kept the No. 1 spot in the midrange market for six years, according to Jean Bozman, a research vice president at IDC.