Not POWER7, Not BlueGene, (Score 3, Interesting)

From the article:

"The system will use 14,000 Intel Xeon processors running in IBM System x iDataPlex servers."

IBM has two in-house HPC platforms that could both reach 3 PFLOPS (BlueGene/Q and POWER7), but instead they're building a Xeon cluster. I'm surprised that they would want to put a machine near the top of the TOP500 that wasn't a full-on IBM benefit--maybe IBM Germany is the contractor, and they don't have the R&D expertise? Or the Xeon cluster is cheaper/easier to program and maintain?