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To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (140114)	7/25/2001 7:08:49 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Ten, Good post. John

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (140114)	7/26/2001 2:49:29 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Dear Tench: Re: "Indications are that workstations and high-end PCs aren't growing as fast as servers." But, what used to be a workstation can now do server work loads. If you change definitions along the way, you could make the server market to be far larger than it is typically defined. Every Pc connected to the internet could be called a server. They are serving a screen for content from various pages. Matter of fact all X window machines call the part with a screen a server to clients runing on host machines (most of the time the same machine but, not always). All UNIX based systems, including most workstations, are servers. And even a $100 card that plugs into the back end of a printer is called a server. What has changed is the server market definition. It used to be defined by the hardware type running. Now it appears that you use a definition of what task is being performed. It is just marketing taking a term and and applying it to things to give them a prestigeous name. It actually dilutes its original purpose and prestige for it to be misused. You say server and most people think of "big iron" mainframes. That was the traditional definition. A system that had lots of storage, I/O, and stuff attached to it. Of course I do use the other functional definition. That allows the use of high end PCs and workstations to be called a server. But, their configuration changes mightly when they are built to do that set of tasks. They have more than the typical disk, a lot of communications ports both serial and network, maxed out memory and are attached to many external boxes like expansion chassises, printers, tape drives, scanners, modem banks, etc. And then you include all of the supporting software like OS, drivers, network stacks, remote admin tools, OLTP monitors, RDBMS, etc. All of this takes a cheap bare bones basic box and multiplies the price ten fold or more. Most servers cost far more than their base price. All that base price covers just what you need to get started and nothing more. If the task is that small, you are probably buying too big an initial box. If all you need is a web server to serve a thousand hits a day, an old small PC can cover that (a bar that is raised more every year). What has happened that the same task loads that were performed by "big iron" can now be done with a very cheap small PC with a bunch of expensive software (or cheap software and far more time). However if you need to satisfy 1000s of users, all at once, 24/7, you need either "big iron" or lots of well configured "small iron", those 1U and 2U servers you speak of. Those lots of small iron need more infrastructure than that big iron and the only reason why its cheaper to have the small iron is that most of that is standardized and thus, without all the engineering needed by big iron (the main reason for those large margins). It all boils down to what definition IDC uses and how it is applied. If they mean big iron when they talk of the server market, the number does not sound that off. If they include all that you do, a good portion of the workstation and high end PCs are included. I think that the former is the basis since IDC has other categories more suited to the 1U and 2U rack sizes. I do believe that the 1U and up to 6U rack sized systems and their equivalents are just as large a market as the $60B big iron market and getting bigger faster, just not now. Pete