IBM Drives Away With Nissan AccountIBM Drives Away With Nissan Account

IBM has signed a contract to provide a range of IT hardware to Nissan Diesel Motors, the engine manufacturing arm of Japanese automaker Nissan. Tuesday's deal, terms of which weren't disclosed, covers systems ranging from servers to storage devices.

Nissan Diesel will use Intel-based IBM x440 eServers to power its accounting and payroll systems. The x440 can hold as many as 16 Intel Xeon processors. The servers will replace older HP PA/RISC systems. Nissan Diesel says the new architecture will let it process batches of payroll information in 50 minutes, compared with the eight hours the older hardware need to handle the task.

Additionally, Takashi Sasaki, assistant director for information planning at the company, says moving to industry-standard hardware will let Nissan Diesel cut its infrastructure costs by 70%.

Clay Ryder, an analyst at Sageza Group, says this is a significant win for IBM. "It's going to be showcase account," he says. The servers will connect to a database powered by IBM's DB2 software.