The interesting question is did they ask anyone who said no thanks!
In the increasingly commercial world of IT provision at Universities I can see people saying no thanks.
Rackspace and power costs both running and cooling have to be recouped somehow. The people who can pay for this stuff in Universities tend to be those running Engineering (CFD and structural analysis) and Life Sciences (sequencing data). They are the ones who get big grants which need big iron to do their work. This looks "blues skies" rather than "must have" stuff hence them "giving it away". I understand Edinburgh as it's a computing research centre but as part of a general HPC system for non Comp-Sci groups not sure how useful it would be. YMMV!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
