IBM launches sub-$1,000 servers

Combating computer makers are shifting the battle from the consumer PC market to servers for small businesses, as IBM Thursday announced that it had released a server priced under $1,000 for small and midsize companies.

At a starting price of $970, IBM's eServer x200 comes with an Intel Celeron 667 MHz microprocessor but can be equipped with a Pentium III. The x200 comes with IBM's Netfinity Director, which allows customers to remotely manage and deploy server configurations for important applications. It also comes with hard disk predictive-failure analysis, a feature that allows the server to monitor hard-disk performance and alert about possible failures.

"Small businesses have been relegated to buying 'white box' servers," said Jim Gargan, IBM's director of strategy and product marketing for eServer, referring to computers built and sold at commodity cost by little-known companies. "The point of the announcement we're making is that customers don't have to purchase white boxes - they can have big-business brand support. They get the same level of support as the big businesses."

The server has Integrated Development Environment support integrated for tape drive and RAID cards. It has five PCI slots (5X32-bit), up to seven bays and integrated 10/100 Ethernet capability.

The x200 comes with 64 M-bytes of ECC SDRAM and can be expanded to 1.5G-bytes. A 15G-byte hard drive is standard, and it can expand to 145.6G-bytes of internal storage capacity.

IBM also introduced a low-priced two-processor server on Thursday for workgroups or branch offices. The x220, priced at $1,405 on IBM's Web site, comes with a single Pentium III 800 MHz processor but can be equipped with up to two 933 MHz Pentium III processors. The stock model has 128M-bytes of ECC SDRAM and can expand to 4G bytes of ECC SDRAM.

However, it lacks a hard drive. While expandable to 145.6 G bytes of storage, a 9.1G-byte hard drive - the smallest available-will add $214.

IBM claims the eServer x220 is "the lowest priced two-way server in the industry offering high-availability," according to their release. "Typically the hardware performs at consistently above a 95% uptime," Gargan said, touting reliability features like the error-checking memory, hot-swap SCSI hard files and improved system management capabilities - including an optional $499 remote supervisor card.

Dell introduced a two-way server in October starting at $1,039 - about $360 less expensive than the IBM offering. Dell's PowerEdge 300 comes equipped with one or two 800-MHz Pentium III processors. It supports up to 1G byte of memory and runs the latest Windows, NetWare and Linux operating systems. It also includes three bays with up to 60G bytes of internal drive capacity.

Gargan called it low-tech.

"They took technologies that have been around since 1996, and they positioned it as a low-price point," said IBM's Gargan. "What we've tried to do here is deliver the latest technology at a price point small businesses can afford."

Dell disputes the claim that x200 is "the first Intel-based server to break the $1,000 barrier," as the IBM release said, and that the x220 is the lowest-priced two-way server with high-availability.

The sticking point is the term high-availability, said Mike Roberts, a Dell product marketing manager. "High availability is in the eye of the beholder," he said. "They're not telling you what you have to do to get the high-availability features." To get the hot-swap functionality for hard drives which allows a manager to replace hard drives without shutting down the server, a RAID card is required - which costs around $700, he said in example.

Dell's PowerEdge 300 server also has reliability features like ECC memory, but Roberts makes no claims of high-availability. It does not integrate support for IDE, nor does it come standard with an Ethernet card. It requires a SCSI adapter card and isn't rack mountable. He said that Dell's price for online purchase dropped below $1,000 shortly after the server's release and before IBM's release, however.

Roberts said a better comparison for the x220 would be the Dell PowerEdge 2400, which comes with more high-availability features than the 300, and is lower priced than an IBM x220 would be after adding a hard-drive, RAID card and hot-plug functionality.

IBM, in Armonk, New York, can be reached at 914-499-1900 or www.ibm.com/. Dell, in Round Rock, Texas, can be reached at 512-338-4400 or at www.dell.com/.