IBM said today that it would slash prices on a large number of its NetFinity servers. That news comes only a few weeks after it said it was going to replicate its NetFinity Direct model in the UK, further antagonising its two tier distribution channel. (Story: Big Blue makes European channel u-turn look like fast oil tanker) The price cuts range from between three per cent to 21 per cent, depending on congfiguration. The highest drop in prices comes on the NetFinity 3000 range, with its PII/350 server dropping from £1,525 to £1,199, a fall of 21.4 per cent. Other machines in this family drop in the case of the PII/400 from £1,815 to £1,448 -- just over a 20 per cent drop. But Big Blue has also cut prices on its NetFinity 5500 range, both box and rack server options, with typical reductions of around the 14 per cent mark. The NetFinity 5500 M10 drops in price from £4,316 to £3,673, a drop of 19 per cent, while selected members of the NetFinity range fall in price by around 13 per cent. Server rival Compaq did not say whether it would introduce a similar set of price reductions. * Big Blue will introduce a set of NT servers aimed at the small and medium sized markets at Comdex/Fall, it confirmed. The suite is targeting BackOffice and comes with Lotus Domino and the DB2 Universal Data Base. ®