IBM and other manufacturers have been doing this for years.
I recall in something like 2002, a client speccing out an upgraded RS6000 running AIX (4way 600Mhz I think) and looking at the breakdown of costs I remember just laughing at the cost of memory alone.
4Gb Ram - $12,000
Total cost was actually - $160,000
I eventually persuaded this client to take our linux version of the software, even though it was new at the time, and I specced out two high end dual xeons for them which came to about $25,000 total and that includes a hefty overhead for onsite service.
They've never looked back