(continued)
National Gypsum Co. saves money by leveraging
its IBM zSeries mainframe to support Web-based inquiries of its
various mainframe-based applications. "Our Web site is bridged to
our mainframe," says Mike Brannon, senior manager of Internet
technology at the sheetrock manufacturer, headquartered in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
By integrating its legacy applications with the company's Web
site, National Gypsum was able to avoid having to buy new computers.
"It actually takes fewer people to manage the mainframe
environment," says Peter McCaffrey, director of product marketing
for the eServer zSeries mainframe business at IBM.
In keeping with the craze to save via centralization, some
companies have been able to get rid of a dozen, or 50, or even 100
smaller servers by rehosting all their systems on a mainframe.
Similarly, Winnebago Industries Inc. continues to roll along with
its big box. "It's typical for companies to have unused capacity on
the mainframe," says Dave Ennen, technical support manager at the
Forest City, Iowa, maker of motor homes.
The company has been able to run a number of newer Web-type
applications on its IBM mainframe without having to add servers.
"We've had mainframes here since the early 1970s, and we still have
a lot of homegrown applications running on there that are critical
to our business."
But for companies without an existing investment in mainframes,
the continuing surge of new server technologies tends to drive
data-center design. Many are investing in powerful new machines
called "blade" servers that essentially contain the guts of several
PCs packed onto a single card (as opposed to the more "traditional"
— if one can use that word in IT — rack-mounted server unit).
Ultimately, these machines offer the power of a supercomputer at
far less cost. "Blade servers use very standard elements to optimize
space, power, and cooling," says Anil Vasudeva, president and
principal analyst at Imex Research in San Jose, California. The
modular servers' flexibility means they can be configured into
various telecom, networking, or storage modules.
Blade servers can be harnessed to run any number of computing
power-hungry applications, including the high input/output
requirements of online transaction processing, decision-support
systems with online analytical processing, and on-demand
video-streaming applications that require high bandwidth. The impact
of blade servers "will be truly profound," adds Vasudeva.
Blades are very much in keeping with the continuing
commoditization of the server market. Low-end machines have plunged
in price to the point where some observers refer to them as
"disposable." Once expensive and bulky, today's servers are priced
so low that if one fails, it's more economical to replace it than to
fix it.
In some cases, the spares are already installed in standby mode,
waiting to be switched on. Dell Computer Co.'s lowest-priced server
sells for $349, including rebates. As recently as the late 1990s,
most servers typically were priced in the $12,000 to $100,000
range.
Regardless of what hardware one finds in the data center, the
odds are increasingly good that it will be running some version of
Linux, the legendarily "free" operating system that seems to win new
converts — even among vendors — every day. Linux isn't totally free,
of course; when companies adopt it, they typically spring for
maintenance and support services in order to have a vendor on call.
But there is no license charge, and for that reason alone most large
companies are giving Linux at least a chance.
Some have found that its associated costs — such as consultants
to install it and hiring new employees or training current staff to
use it — can swallow up much of the savings. "We asked ourselves if
this could possibly be a replacement strategy to drive our costs
down," says Ann Turnbull, first vice president and IS manager at
Mellon Financial Corp., in Pittsburgh. "We figured that the cost of
conversion would outweigh any savings over a two-to-three-year
period."
Despite a surfeit of media attention, Linux has not in fact taken
over the world; it accounts for just 5 percent of the server market.
But its momentum is unmistakable, and even Sun, which has long
touted its Solaris operating system, now offers Linux-based systems
on the low end.
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