More Not April Fools: Even More Price Hikes For Power Systems

March 24, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

OK, this is getting crazy. On March 3, IBM announced price increases for various parts of the Power Systems stack and related hardware and software technologies often used with the platform. IBM also announced additional price increases to rebalance its pricing with respect to the US dollar for eighteen foreign currencies around the world in the same announcement. These price increases will take effect on April 1.

These price increases from March 3 were in addition to ones that it made in April 2024, then in September 2024, and then again in December 2024 for parts of the Power System stack, which includes related Storage products and services. These three price increases took effect before the one mentioned at the top of the story. These price changes are cumulative, by the way, so if you have a price list from last year, it is complicated to figure out how much things have changed. You have to do a lot of math.

In any event, that was four broad-based price increases in a year. Which is the most we have ever seen in watching Big Blue for more than three and a half decades.

Well, make it five in a year, because in announcement letter AD25-0948, dated March 21, IBM has new price hikes on Power Systems and Storage products that also take effect on April 1 and that are in addition to already-announced price increases. As in the past, IBM does not explain these price increases.

What we can tell you from the spreadsheet that IBM has as part of the announcement is that customers in the United States will see price increases across several members of the Power Systems lineup. But customers in the Canada, Latin America, EMEA, Asia/Pacific, and Japan areas will all see an additional 3 percent price increase for the Power E980. Considering that the Power E980 is pretty long in the tooth and will presumably not be available once Power Power11 machinery is in the field for a while, this might be an indication of the hesitancy of customers to move up to Power10 and Power11 – perhaps because of older application, database, and operating system releases needed – and IBM knows it ahead of time. And is therefore using the stick to encourage people to move.

In the United States, Power E980 prices will go up 5 percent, and there is also a 5 percent price increase for the Power E1050, a four-way machine based on Power10 processors. The Power S1024 two-socket server for AIX, IBM i, and Linux and the Power L1022 two-socket server for Linux have 3 percent additional price hikes, as do the Power-based 7063-CR1 Hardware Management Console, the Power 7965-S42 rack, and the 7316 rack keyboard and monitor.

On the storage front, IBM’s DS8K Power-based disk and flash SANs have a 10 percent increase around the world, as does the TS7700 virtual tape library. Tape media has a 7 percent hike as does its Defender Ready Nodes and its Fusion storage and management layer for Red Hat OpenShift container platforms. FlashSystem 9000 and FlashSystem 7000 all-flash arrays have a 9 percent increase in the United States and 6 percent in EMEA. FlashSystem 5300 arrays have a 7 percent increase in the US and 4 percent in EMEA.

It is difficult to tell if this has to do with manufacturing that is done overseas and subject to import duties, or opportunistic price increases, or a high cost of getting components or paying for labor for manufacturing. It would be interesting indeed to see the prices of the same equipment from April 2021 and April 2025, that is all we know. And if we could get that data to compile it, we would. But Big Blue is very secretive about its complete price list these days. The only way you can get any pricing at all if you are outside of IBM is through a qualified revenue opportunity on a configured machine – and you only see what you are looking to buy. The days of getting a feature-complete price list by machine type from Big Blue are long gone.

Which brings us back to something we have said for a long time: It should be illegal to not publish a full price list.

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