IBM servers ranks a top in UNIX study
SOMERS, N.Y., Dec 27 (Reuters) - IBM, the world's largest
computer maker, on Monday said its Unix servers received the
highest ranking by a D.H. Brown Associates study of comparable
computer products.
International Business Machines Corp.'s <IBM.N> UNIX
servers ranked ahead of second-place Hewlett-Packard Co.
<HWP.N> and third place Sun Microsystems Inc.<SUNW.O>, for
commercial Unix based servers, said Richard Partridge, senior
research analyst for D.H. Brown.
Hewlett-Packard gained the most ground, rising from second
to first among the commercial Unix servers.
"Last year IBM came from the back of the pack to a
leadership position," Partridge said. "They needed to be
recognized and to give them credit for reinvigorating their
product. This year the news item is IBM has tenaciously held on
to that position and Hewlett-Packard is coming on strong."
The study is meant to help customers navigate past the
chest beating by vendors and provide a clear gauge of
comparison of servers that can be used for a wide breadth of
applications, Partridge said.
"It's to show who has demonstrated that they can do well
across a broad enough range of different stress test to be an
overall good product for a lot of different uses," he said.
In the narrower category of high performance engineering
technical area, IBM came in second to Silicon Graphics
Inc.<SGI.N>
Unix, a software operating system commonly used to run
powerful business computers, competes with Microsoft Corp.'s
Windows operating systems.
The comparison study is meant to help information
technology specialists, those who oversee corporate, scientific
and education center computer systems.
"It actually helps both us and our customers in similar
manners," said David Gelardi, director of benchmarking for IBM.
Benchmarking are various points of comparisons computer
companies use to evaluate their products against their
competitors. Because benchmarking is as individual as the
companies who perform it, the study was particularly
useful in standardizing the evaluations across the board,
Gelardi said.
"There are hundreds of bechmarkings," Gelardi said. "It
allows us and our customers to look at an entire line in
comparison with our competition."
IBM's new RS/6000 S80 server, which debuted on the market
in September, helped to drive IBM's performance, the company
said. It is one of the most widely used workhorses in
electronic business.
Its predecessor, the s70, which has been on the market for
about two years, also contributed to IBM's top rankings as did
the RS/6000 SP the top-of-line Unix also known as "deep blue."
The computer gained fame in 1996 when it lost a chess match to
champion Garry Kasparov and then again in 1997 when it beat
him.
REUTERS |
