InfoWorld See Good Things In Store for New Server Kid: Apple

by , 9:00 AM EST, January 28th, 2003

Is Xserve becoming the server of choice among discerning IT types? Could be, according to an article in InfoWorld. The IT oriented magazine says that Apple's new foray into the server market is yielding tangible results. The article, titled Apple strengthens server support goes into some detail about how Apple's Xserve, powered by the latest incarnation of OS X, is winning over 'Switchers' of a different sort. From the article:

We had previously been hosting at Exodus on Linux but the cost was prohibitive and we made the decision to host ourselves," said Matt Ott, director of Marketing at Terayon, in Santa Clara ,Calif.

After reviewing numerous platforms, Ott said Terayon went with the Mac platform for its ease of use and price performance, especially in the area of storage where Mac supports less costly IDE drives rather than SCSI which is typical of 1U rack mounted servers.

"We have a bunch of Unix guys around here and they go in through the command line and I go in through the GUI and everybody is happy," he said .

Ott added that SecureZone supports unlimited users unlike the Windows licensing model. The SecureZone application encompasses functionality for personalization, customized Web site creation, authoring, Web management access control and security. Secure Zone for Sybase will ship by the end of the first quarter and will start at $25,000 for one server and five groups.

The article offers some useful insights into what other IT managers are thinking about when considering servers. Stop by InfoWorld for more...well, information.

The Mac Observer Spin:

We think the article pretty much says it all. Xserve is picking up steam. With each improvement and enhancement, both OS X and Xserve becomes more enticing to IT folks looking for choices, and choice is the name of the game these days.

While we applaud Apple on going against the tide of nay-sayers and making Xserve a success, those TMO staffers who work in the IT world would sorely like to see the external RAID that was mentioned when Xserve was introduced. We believe that such a product would only accelerate Xserve sales. Not that we are rushing Apple, mind you. We firmly believe a product should be released only when it's ready, but it is hard to wait.

Apple strengthens server support Apple strengthens server support