I nformationWeek has published an in-depth look at Appleis prospects in the enterprise space. The article, penned by Thomas Claburn, focuses on the fact that Appleis cost competitiveness, of all things, has helped the company open new doors in the enterprise space, and cites numerous examples. From the article:
But Colsais Xserve cluster, dubbed Mach5, which should be operational this fall, draws about half a megawatt of power. The systems proposed by the competition required up to three times that. As a consequence, some of the competing systems required more processors, which drove up the cost.
Apple--cost competitive? The Army was as skeptical as anybody familiar with the business-technology market, DiRienzo says, asking the usual questions: "Why are you going to put it on Apple? Theyire more expensive. Are you going to get the same thing out?" But the project worked so well, "they were very supportive of us as we went through this solicitation and this acquisition," DiRienzo says. "Theyire happy with the performance that the Apples should give."
Theyire especially happy with the price tag: $5.8 million. The next-closest bid came in at $7.4 million.
There is much, much more information on this subject in the full article, which is three pages in length. We recommend it as a very good, and a very informative read. We particularly enjoyed the company on page 2, Applica, that bragged about being able to get twice the storage at half the cost from Apple when compared to the Dell solution also being considered.