Microsoft will take aim at IBM Thursday in a Web campaign touting Windows Server on Intel-based hardware as a better, more economical performer than IBM's AIX and RISC server platform.
Key to the effort will be data derived from Microsoft-conducted tests that the company said show Windows Server 2008 on Intel-based HP blade servers outperforming an IBM Power server with Power processors and IBM's AIX Unix OS.
The application used in the testing was an IBM stock trader application. Also used in the tests was IBM's WebSphere application server. Windows also outperformed IBM when the application was written as a Microsoft .Net application, according to Microsoft.
"We find that there's lots of customers that are running WebSphere and we want to have a simple message for them: that they can save significant money on hardware and increase their performance by running WebSphere on Windows," said Steven Martin, senior director of product management for the developer platform at Microsoft.
Microsoft will feature its data on a Web site to be called www.websphereloveswindows.com, in a campaign entitled, "Who Knew?" A white paper documenting test configurations will be featured as will a capacity planning tool and information on mainframe migrations.
IBM could not be reached for comment on Microsoft's claims when contacted late on Wednesday afternoon.