System iNetwork

December 2, 2009

Three Server Architectures to Rule the World?

According to Joe Clabby, president of Clabby Analytics, there's a major shakeout underway in the midrange and high-end server market, and once the dust has cleared, there's a possibility that only three viable architectures for enterprise servers will remain, two of which IBM controls: POWER, x86, and the mainframe z architecture.

It's an interesting premise, which Clabby details in an online report, covering not only some of the strengths behind IBM's POWER, z, and Intel's Xeon, but also some recent floundering at HP and Sun. Here's a snip:

Based upon these trends, Clabby Analytics believes that, over the next few years, the midrange/high-end market segment of the computer market place will gravitate toward three microprocessor/server architectures (Xeon, POWER, and z). If Oracle can't right the Sun UltraSPARC/ chip multi-threading (CMT) ship (and we think it won't) -- and if Intel's Itanium architecture continues to struggle (and we think it will) -- then Sun and HP midrange/high-end customers will have little choice but to move to IBM POWER-, IBM z-, or Intel Xeon-based servers.

Information technology (IT) executives who don't recognize that this shift is underway -- and who continue to invest in Itanium- and UltraSPARC/CMT-based servers -- may find that they have wasted their precious information systems hardware budgets on dead-ended server architectures and operating environments.

For the entire report, check out http://clabbyanalytics.com/uploads/ServerMarketViewFinalFinal.pdf.

Posted by cmaxcer at December 2, 2009 10:24 AM