Having made the boast in September 1999 that it wanted to be Unix
business market leader in a couple of years, IBM claims to be
making headway towards vindicating the statement.
Leo Steiner, vp webserver group, EMEA, pre Frankfurt's SP World in
May maintained that 'S80 technology would be rolled out to the rest
of the company's enterprise servers'. Since last September, IBM has
signed agreements with such web-related leaders as Ariba, Vignette,
i2, Siebel, Hyperion and Checkpoint.
'There are now some four players in the Unix market,' says
Steiner. 'We're heading for top slot. During the period of the end
of the fourth quarter and most of the first quarter this year,
customers were tied to business problems. Now, in the second
quarter, demand is coming back across the board from all
customers.' A tsunami of statistics was then rolled out from IBM,
most of which is reported here.
Michel Teyssedre, worldwide director of server field marketing,
says, 'Over the next four years the biggest market will be Unix,
with characteristics of mainframe reliability, investment
protection, scaleability, applications and performance stemming
from our S80 mid range boxes. Sun may be making some boasts and
there was talk of an eclipse in the media. But an eclipse only
lasts for a few seconds. What we'd like to see now is the
sunset.'
Sun's product marketing manager for enterprise servers Ian
Meakin smiles. 'Our sales continue to expand strongly - indeed this
has been the case for the last 11 consecutive quarters. We're
growing faster than anyone else - which includes Hewlett-Packard,
Compaq and IBM - and our sales accelerated up to and after Y2K.
Demand for our kit has never slackened, as analyst reports
demonstrate.'
Teyssedre spouts facts and figures: IBM has spent $36bn on
r&d in the six years to 1999; the company filed 2,658 patents
in 1999 (40 per cent above the previous record - hang on, 2,658
averages at over seven per day, assuming every day worked - is that
why the research labs are so big?)
'We're number one in Unix technology leadership, OS leadership
(that's Aix, Monterey and Linux, which is being deployed
'everywhere') and system architecture where 256 processors are
configured in a single environment,' says Teyssedre. 'What's more,
we have one million RS/6000s installed, with some 80 per cent of
SP2 installations being in business or commercial
environments.'
Analyst DH Brown has ostensibly rated IBM's Aix as the best Unix
on the market for five years in a row - yet according to Teyssedre
no-one knows it.
Ian Roscow, manager of webserver sales product management, EMEA,
is equally full of enthusiasm for the copper-fuelled microprocessor
technology in the S80, which has been rolled out to the three new
mid range models, the M80, H80 and F80. Platitudes are also
reserved for Numa-Q and the new 43P-150 workstation.
'There's 99.999 per cent availability which equates to less than
six minutes annual unplanned downtime,' says Roscow. 'We offer
HACMP, high availability clustered multi processing,
technology.'
Miles Barel, program director, Unix marketing, says: 'Three
words that go together: Unix, Linux, and IBM. The evolution of
e-business is presenting customers with a new set of challenges:
how to integrate multiple applications and data, and meeting the
needs of dynamic and unpredictable environments.'
Barel produces the Unix view schematic where the industry-wide,
standards based application environments of appliance servers
overlap with web application servers, which then overlap with data
transaction servers. At the appliance server - simple - end it's
the territory of Linux and Windows 2000. There's a slight overlap
in the middle of web application servers with Aix/Monterey, which
covers all the way up to data transaction servers, or the complex
bit.
Picking up on Teyssedre's comments, Barel points to DH Brown's
Unix work which rated Aix 4.3.3 as number one - for systems
management, clustering, and internet technologies - above Tru64,
HP-UX, Sun's Solaris 7 and Irix 6.5. Note, all the testing was done
on products readily available on the market at the time of the
tests.
'The point to make is: one size doesn't fit all,' says Barel.
'The business does not have to fit the technology. Technology must
adapt to fit the business.
'Aix workload manager uses technology and expertise from S/390,
ploughed into the Aix kernel,' says Barel. 'Later this year,
Numa-Q's version of Unix - ptx - will have its capabilities ported
to Aix on RS/6000. Note, Aix is Monterey on RS/6000. Monterey is
Aix on steroids.'
Barel moves to the Linux affinity strategy, the Linux
application execution environment. There are Linux binary
interfaces for Aix/Monterey. Implementing Linux APIs on top of Aix
means programming compatibility, which provides an expanded
application portfolio. Monterey with Aix 'combines the best of Aix
technology, flexibility to meet customer needs, strong affinity
with Linux, and a volume enterprise-class industry leader in the
Unix segment.
'Monterey 64 on IA-64 will be delivered in the fourth quarter,
as will ptx including Monterey technology,' says Barel. 'We're
developing IBM Linux based offerings and expanding the IBM Linux
technical centre of competence. It's about allowing applications to
be deployed in all relevant places to drive applications
growth.'
The benefits of IBM's Unix strategy? Barel points to
applications portability across systems and software environments.
The use of existing servers, applications, data, skills and
business processes.
'To win in e-business, it's Aix, Linux, and IBM,' says
Barel.
Phil Dawson, senior research analyst, Meta Group, says: 'One's
own house must be in order prior to externalisation. There are
critical IT issues that need to be addressed. Improving business
continuity through availability, scaleability, and workload
management. Making better use of storage area networks, enabling
platform and storage integration. Managing near term storage
infrastructure costs.'
'Note that storage constitutes 75 per cent of enterprise system
costs, and that it costs 14 times more to manage systems a few
years out,' says Dawson. 'Customers need a robust infrastructure
with agile server deployment.' He further hammers home the point
that availability issues will continue to impact e-business
deployments through to 2002. Uptime is crucial.
Steve Sole, TBC Group sales director, says: 'We've been a
reseller of RS/6000 for as long as the product has been around,
have grown to be number one UK reseller, and we're business partner
of the year 1999 - plus we've gained IBM centre of excellence award
for RS/6000 four years running, as well as AS/400 and Netfinity.
With the leading Aix skills outside IBM, we're partners to many
FTSE 100 companies. The F/H/M80 servers are more competitive than
any other product line in this mid range space, giving us the
opportunity to increase market share - which has already been
recognised by our key ISV partners.'
At end-May TBC was acquired by South Africa's largest RS/6000
reseller Faritec, which makes the group a significant RS/6000
customer to the tune of some £25m.
Jim Rathbone, recently-appointed ceo at Premier business partner
and 1999 SP reseller-of-the-year winner AnIX, was very encouraged
with the IBM server strategy unveiled at SP World. 'The S80 has
given IBM leading position against Sun, outselling its equivalent
product by over four times. There are broader offerings in the
high-end Unix systems arena with the Sequent acquisition. IBM now
has the strongest product range it's ever had in the Unix market,
with clear plans to make the range stronger with Project
Monterey.'
But Sun's Meakin reckons, 'IBM still uses different technology
to deliver different service levels. Since IBM 'refreshed' its
technology it's not done a good job. We finish jobs off that IBM
should have done. We're 100 per cent Unix and offer scalable Unix
boxes.' l
What's on offer
TBC implemented a robust financial system for a major telco
based on two RS/6000s - one production; one remote for disaster
recovery/development - which offered more functions than those
offered by HP or Sequent, including HACMP software. The business
includes visual conferences, CCTV, and a video assessment system,
targeted at the insurance sector.
Graphics arts solutions provider CreoScitex is using an F80. The
company produces image capture systems; inkjet proofers; thermal
imaging devices for films, plates and proofs; professional colour
and copydot scanning systems; and workflow management software.
Internet service provider Prodigy Communications uses five H70s for
inbound mail servers, S80 for user authentication, H70s for web
serving, and B50s as domain name servers. A S/390 and DB2 handles
back-end reporting and billing. Prodigy will now use up to three
M80s as inbound mail servers to accommodate explosive growth in
online users (three million expected). Web registrar Network
Solutions has S80 to power the master computer for all web
addresses everywhere, and is to deploy M80s through its registry
business. The company provides domain name registration services
for all available country-code top-level domains, eg .uk, .de
(Germany) and .fr (France).