AMD gaining more of the server's share

IBM's top server executive is warming to Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron, eyeing the processor's business advantages and the successes Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems have had with it.

Bill Zeitler, senior vice president of IBM's systems and technology group, wouldn't comment on whether Big Blue plans to offer mainstream Opteron chips, but he indicated in an interview this week that the move would make sense.

"I don't want to speculate when and if we would expand our activities here, but there's no question HP and Sun have benefited by having a broader Opteron portfolio than we've had," Zeitler said. "There are a whole bunch of business considerations that would say we would have done better had we had a four-(processor) Opteron product."

Big Blue was the first of the four top-tier server makers to sell Opteron servers, but its models were geared only for the technical-computing niche. Later, it added blade servers that are better-suited to mainstream business computing. Zeitler said IBM was surprised by the demand for those products in the fourth quarter of 2005 but then had "very robust sales" of the blades in the first quarter of 2006.

IBM's warmer attitude puts more pressure on Dell, the lone top-tier server maker selling only Intel-based x86 servers. "Opteron's a great horse to ride. Sun and HP have done very well with it, and it's gotten the attention of IBM," said TechKnowledge Strategies analyst Mike Feibus. "You've got to wonder how long Dell can stay on the sidelines and watch."

Comments

Play against Xbox360 gamer on PC in Vista

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates on Tuesday announced a cross-platform gaming service that integrates games played on cell phones, Xbox 360 consoles and the upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The "Live Anywhere" service will be available as part of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-generation PC operating system. The consumer version is scheduled for release early next year. "It means that you have one online community," Gates said in a news conference. "This platform can really unleash developers to do amazing new things." The system would extend the company's existing Xbox Live service for the Xbox 360 console into millions of Internet-enabled PCs and cellular phones. No pricing information on the new service was announced. In recent months, Microsoft has been pushing a number of online services that it hopes will boost revenue as markets for its traditional software become increasingly saturated. The company expects to make money off s...

Welcome to Google Checkout, that will be $3.14

From ZDNet The first time I looked up the domain " GDrive.com " it appeared that someone other than Google had it registered. A trip down memory lane takes us to my very first article that describes how I determined GDrive.com is in fact owned by Google, despite what it looks like on the surface. Well, by the same logic I have found that a brand new set of domains appearing to be registered to someone else were actually registered by Google on May 25th. The domains googlecheckout.net / org / info (.com is owned by someone else at the moment) have all been registered to a company called DNStination, Inc. Don't be fooled, the registrar is MarkMonitor — a company that prides itself on the protection of your corporate identity. There is no way they would let just anybody register a domain with "Google" in it — especially since Google is one of their clients. Then who is this DNStination, Inc. then? Googling the address of this "company" tell...

Hackers biting Apple

Hackers are increasingly focusing on Apple's Mac OS X, and the number of newly discovered vulnerabilities has surged. Such a switch could mean big implications for Apple's user base, which has traditionally not had to concern itself too much over security. It's been an impressively quiet year so far on the PC virus and worm front, and hackers seem to be focusing their attention elsewhere. One such area is Apple's Mac OS X. Once mostly ignored by malware developers, there appears to be a growing interest in this "alternative" OS. Details Have you noticed the dearth of serious PC virus and worm threats out there lately? Well, it isn't a figment of your imagination -- according to vnunet.com, viruses are no longer the top security threat . While serious attacks are still likely to emerge, the bottom has apparently fallen out of the PC antivirus market -- just as Microsoft begins a big push into the security market. One cause of this drop-off is solidif...

exinfo88

Search This Blog