Xserve Competes With High-End Unix Servers

wayneh writes "There is a great article at ITworld.com about how Apple's Xserve is finding its way to high-end server vendors. The vendors who traditionally sold Sun and IBM servers are now looking into and stocking the Xserve as their clients become curious about the system. It'll be interesting to see how well the Xserve does among its more traditional competitors."

Comments

yay

[nemui-chan]

It'll be nice to see Apple get out of its rut as a graphics machine and only in schools. Macs are great machines... it used to just be the OS that (tech) people didn't like... and now even thats not a problem. (Did I get the first post? :)

demand & licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great to see. I hope that Apple can scale their production volume to keep up with the demand. I think one of the major selling points is that it comes with an Unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server, unlike any Windows 2000 Advanced Server setup. Licenses are expensive, and I know that's been a major factor in us moving away from Novell NetWare here at my university.

Why is price a concern?

[skippy5066]

At the end of the article, it says:

"The challenge is, who is going to buy it?" Eunice said. "There is so much pricing pressure and competition in the market. The reality is that Apple will have a hard time going to financial communities or telcos with this product."

Apple gives you an UNLIMITED client license - how can the article offer this as a serious concern when licensing cost is such a big concern, especially for Micrsoft houses?

Re:Why is price a concern?

[Louis_Wu]

I like that. So many times in these discussions, we forget about a possible progression of events which could lead to X. (Ahem, 'X' being a variable, not necessarily a Mac OS.) When you start to think in terms of paths toward an end, getting to that end becomes more managable. It's like a ship which is off course by half a degree, you don't really notice it, but if you don't check your course mid-route, you're off by 26 miles after crossing the Atlantic. (Assuming that crossing the Atlantic is a 3000 mile trip.) A little nudge at the beginning, and you can get a big result in the end.

Take my case. I'm getting a PowerBook this week because I want the power of unix and ease of use. I like my Red Hat 7, but it's on the same machine as WinXP, where I play lots of games. So I reboot a LOT. Got tired of booting, put Mozilla on Windows, surf from there. But I can't learn Perl or use EMACS to write web pages, etc. Solution: another computer, dedicate one PC to Linux, the other to games. BUT, MacOS X has ease of use, unix, all in one shiny package. I can type in emacs while surfing in Moz, while putting my resume in a Word format (yuck, but some businesses really want it that way), while ... anything. :)

So for me the progression was Windows to Linux to Mac, because of my interests. If we could find more ways to identify specific interests and needs, we might be able to convert more people to something 'better', or set people on paths toward the better. I started using emacs on Win98. I think that started it for me. Maybe we can start others down the path of the light side in similar fashion.

Synergy

[baldass_newbie]

In the article they talk repeatedly about the ability of XServe to talk with Sun boxes. They also talk about the XServe filling a niche Sun doesn't.
Is it me or would an Apple/Sun alliance make a lot of sense? I mean, besides the egos involved. You'd have server (high/low end and database) coupled with desktop.
Plus you'd have all of the stuff that MicroSoft wants working together (clean desktop for idiots, server market, stability, security) Just wondering