Lenovo, which recently lost one of its top enterprise business leaders and has so far failed to recover all sales previously produced by IBM in x86 servers, is ramping up efforts to win more business. The latest is the addition of Red Hat OpenStack. Lenovo is also offering rebates and other software.

New data last week from research firms IDC and Gartner showed that Lenovo had driven up server sales to close to $1 billion and its market share grew to more than 7 percent in the second quarter. But most of the gain came from the $2-billion-plus acquisition of IBM’s x86 server business last fall.

Then came news that Jay Parker, a veteran Lenovo executive, had left the enterprise business group, which focuses on servers and services.

But Lenovo, which operates its global x86 business from the Triangle, is moving ahead aggressively on multiple fronts in trying to drive sales while becoming more competitive with marketshare leaders HP and Dell.

Lenovo-Red Hat

On Monday morning, Lenovo unveiled new additions to its software for servers at the VMWorld conference in San Francisco:

  • Red Hat OpenStack
  • VMware Software Defined Data Center

Raleigh-based Red Hat is using OpenStack as a key tool in an attempt to capitalize on the tech industry’s embrace of cloud computing and virtualization.

“According to a recent Lenovo survey, businesses are expected to double cloud applications and storage over the next couple of years,” Lenovo said in announcing the deal. “Managing complex cloud virtualization and using big data to drive revenue growth will be a significant edge for businesses large and small.”

Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux OpenStack will be offered with multiple Lenovo and ThinkServer x86 models.

The two companies have worked together in the past, but the announcement Monday deepens the relationship.

“The open, hybrid cloud is critical to the next generation of enterprise IT, and open-source technologies serve as fundamental building blocks for innovation across the entire realm of enterprise computing,” said Jim Totton, general manager of the Platforms Business Unit at Red Hat, in the partnership announcement.

“In this vein, we are pleased to expand our relationship with Lenovo to provide our leading open-source solutions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform on top of Lenovo hardware. Together, we’ll bring secure, reliable and flexible platforms to enterprise IT, be it on bare metal, via virtual machines or powering private- and hybrid-cloud deployments.”

Two weeks ago, Lenovo also added a new storage product with StorMagic as part of a plan to be the “lowest cost provider” in the hyper-converged market, according to CRN.

“We’re going to drive down our cost structure to be the lowest-cost provider in the marketplace versus Dell, versus HP, versus Cisco,” Brian Hamel, Lenovo’s vice president and general manager for North America Enterprise Business Group, told CRN.

All the software and services additions are designed to help Lenovo offer what it calls an “agile infrastructure” that will help customers adapt to the ever-changing IT business.

Hefty rebates for servers

Lenovo also is offering a new round of rebates to its server sales partners as an incentive to drive sales.

According to CRN, Lenovo is offering a rebate package of up to $4,655 for sales of 10 SystemX3550 models at $2,089 each.

That’s nearly a 25 percent rebate.

“That did catch my eye,” Lou Giovanetti, co-founder of CPU Sales and Service, a Lenovo partner, told CRN. “These guys are going for the jugular.”