One of the better attributes of the technology market is that businesses continually have access to improved products at lower prices. In SA, this phenomenon has been complemented in recent years by a highly favourable exchange rate, which is putting the latest advances well within the reach of many companies.
In the realm of servers, more power, reliability and capacity than ever before is at the disposal of local businesses, says Bertus van Heerden, managing executive of Business Connexion`s Persetel Competency.
"Competition within the server market has turned up some superb advances in recent years. Vendors like IBM, Sun Microsystems and HP, are striving to outdo one another in terms of performance and price, which ultimately gives end-users far more server for their money," he notes.
In terms of processor technology, which lies at the heart of a good server, Van Heerden notes that the introduction of Chip Multithreading (CMT) from Sun offers the prospect of improved performance by creating `virtual` multiprocessors out of each single chip.
"Sun considers this to be revolutionary; however, at present the advances made by CMT are somewhat offset by the fact that ISV software vendors are charging licensing fees according to processor core`s rather than processor chips," he says.
Says Van Heerden: "IBM`s Power 4 and latest Power 5 technology is definitely leading the Unix technology race. With its well-defined roadmap and strong market acceptance, clients looking to consolidate and benefit from the favourable exchange rate will not have to look far, as IBM does not suffer from the same software pricing challenges.
Van Heerden notes that this is a common conundrum for hardware development - when new advances are made, ISVs are required to develop software that takes advantage of innovations on hardware platforms.
"This takes time, but it does happen," he says, noting that the 64-bit Intel Itanium project has taken years to get off the ground. "With Itanium, the development is taking far longer than anticipated, and is also dependent on the availability of cost-effective and reliable applications for the platform, but it is likely that critical mass will be reached soon.
"Locally, there hasn`t yet been great uptake of the platform, despite the fact that HP, as the co-developer with Intel, has put its strategy directly behind the chip at the expense of its own PA-RISC processor. However, as the applications are ported, and as the platform gains traction, it is likely that the price/performance will come down to a point where it can compete with the well-entrenched Unix platforms; that is, the Sun Solaris, IBM-AIX and even HP`s own HP-UX," Van Heerden explains.
He says many clients are resisting the move to Itanium, as they have found their PA-RISC machines to be proven, secure and reliable.
However, Van Heerden believes that despite the advances made by the Unix vendors, market share locally remains somewhat static - and he says it is likely that Unix will increasingly become a legacy platform as 32-bit Windows with 64-bit extensions and Microsoft`s volume model, becomes a more cost-effective platform.
"The issues of reliability and security are being addressed; if we look at what businesses want, it is low-cost computing, because that obviously contributes to a better bottom line. If this can be achieved with enterprise-class reliability and security, nothing will stop the move to a platform that is common and inexpensive," he says.
While clustering has been championed as the answer to ultimate reliability, Van Heerden feels that this will increasingly become a thing of the past as a result of improvements in hardware reliability `in the box`. "Until recently, clustering was a necessary strategy for ensuring uptime and redundancy in the event of a failure. But with individual servers now offering internal redundancy and the ability to `hot swap` components, clustering is not always needed - the appropriate level of reliability can be achieved even on the Intel platform with offerings such as the Stratus server range," he says.
In terms of client server platform strategies, Van Heerden says the market is likely to continue to support multiple vendors, and that as a solution provider, Business Connexion is aligned with the major technology providers. "We are able to provide and support the necessary technology no matter what the client`s chosen platform - and we believe the market is sufficiently large to support multiple vendors, and thus don`t see any need to advise clients against moving away from a strategy aligned with these companies," he concludes.
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