UK's Equiinet offers to rescue Sun Cobalt clan

Deep discount

By Ashlee Vance in Chicago • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 19th December 2003 16:34 GMT

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UK-based Equiinet has rushed to profit from Cobalt's demise, touting a server appliance refund program for customers willing to give up their Sun Microsystems kit.

We'll hand it to the marketeers at Equiinet for seizing on our declaration that the server appliance is dead, following Sun's decision to end-of-life the once popular Cobalt line of products. One Neil Madle at Equiinet was quick to defend the server-made-easy approach, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.

"Server appliances are alive and kicking," he said. "Equiinet - the UK leader and former rival of the late, almost lamented Cobalt has 30,000 of these multifunctional devices installed and operating in the field."

We figure 30,000 is far less than what Cobalt moved in its prime, but it's a significant total nonetheless.

Equiinet has been running a trade-in program for some time, but is asking Cobalt users to take a special look at the deal.

"Cobalt users can trade-in their units for a £1,000 discount off the price of a brand new NetPilot Plus (£2,495) along with a year's technical support and maintenance contract with Equiinet's approved maintainer."

The company's managing director also wanted to leave Sun users with a parting shot.

"Cobalt users have been left in the lurch by Sun's lack of faith in multifunctional appliances," said Equiinet MD Bob Jones, "But we're prepared to offer big discounts off our solutions and provide them with a solution to their problem."

We'll have more on the end of Cobalt in the coming days. Keep the letters coming. ®