Big Blue rolls out three new midrange Web servers
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SOMERS, N.Y. - IBM continues to grapple with Sun in the hopes of breaking the firm's dominant grip on the Unix Web server market.
Last week, IBM announced three new RS/6000 boxes aimed squarely at Sun's midrange server family, which includes the Enterprise 4500 and 6500. IBM is hoping for a replay of its successful launch of the top-of-the-line RS/6000 S80 server for the midrange Unix Web server market. Each of the three new servers carries copper-wire CPUs, which lets them run cooler and faster than typical aluminum wire-based chips.
The boxes also come with a new feature that will allow them to take a failing CPU offline and transfer its functions to another CPU until maintenance can be scheduled, says Mike Maas, manager of Web server products at IBM.
Gerstner speaks out
The midrange Unix server market is a major target in IBM's sights, according to none other than the firm's CEO, Louis Gerstner. In an address to analysts and investors last Tuesday, Gerstner acknowledged IBM's bungling in this market has given Sun "an open field." "We've been soft where it's hurt us the most, which is midrange Unix. It's a hole that we're going to plug," he said. He cited the S80's success in the high end of the market, saying that some 1,500 systems have been sold in about six months, outselling Sun Enterprise 10000 servers 3 to 1.
The three amigos
The largest of the three new IBM servers is the eight-way M80, which comes with up to eight 500-MHz copper CPUs and 32G bytes of memory. Sitting just below the S80, the M80 is capable of about 60,000 transactions per second. It competes with Sun's Enterprise 4500 and Enterprise 6500 machines, and pricing starts at about $67,995.
Next in line is the six-way H80, with up to four 450-MHz or up to six 500-MHz copper chips, and 16G bytes of memory. It comes in a rack-mountable format to make it easy to install in Internet server farms, IBM says. The box is capable of supporting up to 2,200 simultaneous IP connections, and it competes with Compaq's AlphaServer ES40 and Sun's Enterprise 3500 Unix machines. Pricing for the H80 starts at about $21,995.
At the low end is the F80 six-way box, which comes with up to four 450-MHz or up to six 500-MHz CPUs and 16G bytes of memory. The F80 is not rack-mountable. The F80 is competing against Sun's Enterprise 450, and its pricing starts at about $18,995. All three servers run AIX 4.3.3, the latest version of IBM's Unix, and will be available by month's end.
Users can get a very reliable server that can handle a high number of transactions and users for less money than they can from competitors such as Sun, says Chuck Kuhlman, senior Unix engineer at ADC Telecommunications, a maker and designer of telecommunications software and hardware in Minneapolis. The company runs core business applications such as SAP enterprise resource planning software on an IBM RS/6000 network with about 5,000 users worldwide. ADC has been using two H80s in its network without any downtime. In fact, after June, the company plans to keep adding H80s to the network, Kuhlman says.
RELATED LINKS
Entry-level Unix servers on tap from HP
Hewlett-Packard this week will launch a new line of entry-level Unix servers as part of a broad effort to earn the vendor a bigger slice of the estimated $10.8 billion worldwide market for such systems. Network World, 5/15/00.
