Where did the $10bn Itanium pledge come from?

The Itanium Solutions Alliance on Thursday beat its PR drum and came up with a stunning figure that would be invested into the platform over the next five years: 10 billion dollars. The money is earmarked for marketing and the creation of software and hardware that will work with the servers.

But as it turns out, the alliance simply wrapped an old stone in some shiny gift-wrap. Because the $10bn adds up to what the alliance members are already investing anyway.

For starters, the figure isn't as impressive as it might seem. The alliance has nine members including HP, Intel, Fujitsu and SGI, and the investment is spread out over 5 years, making for $220 per member company per year. HP alone is investing about $1bn a year in Itanium at this moment, analyst Nathan Brookwood with Insigh 64 told vnunet.com, and Intel too is pulling more than just its weight in trying to salvage the high end server chip.

Unfortunately the big money pitch takes away the attention from the important news. The nine members will also ensure that applications work across systems, fostering the Itanium ecosystem. Practically, if one of the vendors ports over an application to Linux on say HP, users can easily repeat that for an SGI or Bull system. More applications makes for a more attractive platform.

Tags: itanium, intel, SGI, HP, itanium solutions alliance,