VMware has pledged to offer its services for free if it can't slash a company's x64 server costs by half, under the terms of a new promotional programme announced this week.
While the new Guarantee Promotional Programme is only initially available in the US, a positive reaction on the other side of the Atlantic could potentially bring the deal over to the UK, a VMware spokesperson told IT PRO.
"In today's difficult economic climate, this new promotion shows our commitment to customers and our confidence that we can help them reduce cost with no risk," said Bogomil Balkansky, vice president of product marketing for VMware's server business unit.
"Based on our experience in thousands of customer engagements and data collected over more than three years with our Capacity Planner tool, we are confident that, many customers will be able to achieve more than 50 per cent savings on server hardware costs."
It is available to both new and existing customers but has a long list of requirements including using the server hardware configuration recommended by VMware and customers having to put in writing the savings that make at the end of the programme.
However, if it fails to provide the 50 per cent cut in costs, customers will receive all of the professional services used to deploy VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 software stack for free.
The promotion starts tomorrow and expires on 30 June this year. The savings will be assessed by using a VMware total cost of ownership (TCO) calculator at the beginning and the end of the period.
