IBM Offers Deferred Payments On Hardware, Software

IBM on Wednesday said it is offering low-interest rates or deferred payments to companies looking to spend between $25,000 and $1 million on hardware and software.

Under the new financing plan, enterprises and mid-market companies could defer payments without paying interest until January 2005, or chose to start paying immediately at interest rates as low as 4 percent, officials with the Armonk, N.Y., company said.

Among the hardware products covered under the deal are zSeries, iSeries, pSeries and xSeries servers; ThinkPad notebooks, printers, TotalStorage and Retail Store Systems. Software includes WebSphere middleware and DB2 database.

The offer runs through Sept. 30 in the U.S., Canada and selected Latin American countries.