I know...how they can pass up such a grand opportunity is beyond me. How hard would it be to partner with a few reputable companies and cover most of the pillars of business.
Apple:
Choose 3 Telecom vendors to partner with.
Buy a software company that does storage managment and develop low cost unified NAS/SAN hardware via iSCSI and Fibre Channel on the high end. For chrissakes the hardware is commodity now.
Choose 3 security vendors to partner with.
Choose 3 networking partners to partner with.
You don't have to align with the Cisco and IBM of the world here. We're talking about decent but smaller company like Sonicwall or Fortinet. You can't swing a dead cat and not hit 10 storage startups that want to sell themselves and their IP to you.
The Xserve is selling but it's a hard justification for companies that already run Windows/Linux heterogeneous networks to add an Apple server to the mix in some cases.
I still think they should have bought Sun. Sun's been shopping around for a buyer. Now that window may be closing.
I still think they should have bought Sun. Sun's been shopping around for a buyer. Now that window may be closing.
I remember threads here arguing that Sun should buy Apple. How times change.
The main reason for the Xserve's existence is so that SMBs with a lot of Macs can have a friendly, compatible, server platform that's as easy and familiar to set up and maintain as their other Macs are.
Other companies do use Xserves, as they offer a pretty good bang for the buck, but Apple isn't targeting the enterprise market with Xserve or for that matter with anything else.
As for sharing music and videos and photos, I just bought a bare hard drive, slapped it in a USB/Firewire external drive case, and plugged it into my AirPort Extreme. Cheaper than a mini, and far less expensive than an Xserve. To use, just tell iTunes and iPhoto that their libraries are located on the network drive.
I remember threads here arguing that Sun should buy Apple. How times change.
The main reason for the Xserve's existence is so that SMBs with a lot of Macs can have a friendly, compatible, server platform that's as easy and familiar to set up and maintain as their other Macs are.
Other companies do use Xserves, as they offer a pretty good bang for the buck, but Apple isn't targeting the enterprise market with Xserve or for that matter with anything else.
As for sharing music and videos and photos, I just bought a bare hard drive, slapped it in a USB/Firewire external drive case, and plugged it into my AirPort Extreme. Cheaper than a mini, and far less expensive than an Xserve. To use, just tell iTunes and iPhoto that their libraries are located on the network drive.
I've been saying that for years.
Both Solaris and OS X are based on FreeBESD. Both either use, or are moving to, ZFS. Both now are on x86. Both have brilliant software departments. A lot of people in Sun use Macs.
Apple serves the low end server and workstation market, and consumer markets. Sun starts at the low end server and workstation markets and moves all the way up to the high end.
Apple has little in the way of an enterprise sales and service sector, while that's exactly what Sun is.
Sun's problems now are less related to how poorly they're executing, than it is with the fact that their competitors are much more broadly based than they are, and therefor have much greater sales overall, with the concurrent financial depth that Sun lacks. Right now, Sun is the last major server/workstation vendor left. It's a tough position to be in.
If they were purchased by Apple, and Sun goes for just a few billion right now, Apple could supply that sales and financial investment that Sun needs.
I could see them integrating the OS's over a two year period on the server side, then in another year, in the workstation/client (that's us!) side. This could easily preserve the interoperability of both companies software.
It would give Apple the enterprise and government sales they need to grow in a more reliable way, partly insulated from consumer fads.
It would finally give MS a serious competitor.
Of course, I also dream of Apple and Google merging, along with the purchase of Sun. Sigh!!!
Do any major companies actually use X-Serves in quantity? I figured they'd still be useful for running Windows OS-based products in Virtual Machines. I guess no major companies will be using OSX Server, though. I'm only asking since I don't really have much information to go on. I suppose the usual Apple price premium still applies which would decrease the likelihood of corporations buying Apple equipment.
In weak economic times I wouldn't imagine many companies changing over to Apple servers when their current equipment will do.
A company called xTech uses Xserves to do credit card transactions. It was brought up in a WWDC conference back in 2006. Almost every credit card transaction goes through this system. They called it the aquarium as it was all encased in glass with stacks and stacks of Xserves. I'll see if I can find a picture somewhere. I'm not sure if this system is still up and running or not.
Comments
I know...how they can pass up such a grand opportunity is beyond me. How hard would it be to partner with a few reputable companies and cover most of the pillars of business.
Apple:
Choose 3 Telecom vendors to partner with.
Buy a software company that does storage managment and develop low cost unified NAS/SAN hardware via iSCSI and Fibre Channel on the high end. For chrissakes the hardware is commodity now.
Choose 3 security vendors to partner with.
Choose 3 networking partners to partner with.
You don't have to align with the Cisco and IBM of the world here. We're talking about decent but smaller company like Sonicwall or Fortinet. You can't swing a dead cat and not hit 10 storage startups that want to sell themselves and their IP to you.
The Xserve is selling but it's a hard justification for companies that already run Windows/Linux heterogeneous networks to add an Apple server to the mix in some cases.
I still think they should have bought Sun. Sun's been shopping around for a buyer. Now that window may be closing.
I still think they should have bought Sun. Sun's been shopping around for a buyer. Now that window may be closing.
I remember threads here arguing that Sun should buy Apple. How times change.
The main reason for the Xserve's existence is so that SMBs with a lot of Macs can have a friendly, compatible, server platform that's as easy and familiar to set up and maintain as their other Macs are.
Other companies do use Xserves, as they offer a pretty good bang for the buck, but Apple isn't targeting the enterprise market with Xserve or for that matter with anything else.
As for sharing music and videos and photos, I just bought a bare hard drive, slapped it in a USB/Firewire external drive case, and plugged it into my AirPort Extreme. Cheaper than a mini, and far less expensive than an Xserve. To use, just tell iTunes and iPhoto that their libraries are located on the network drive.
I remember threads here arguing that Sun should buy Apple. How times change.
The main reason for the Xserve's existence is so that SMBs with a lot of Macs can have a friendly, compatible, server platform that's as easy and familiar to set up and maintain as their other Macs are.
Other companies do use Xserves, as they offer a pretty good bang for the buck, but Apple isn't targeting the enterprise market with Xserve or for that matter with anything else.
As for sharing music and videos and photos, I just bought a bare hard drive, slapped it in a USB/Firewire external drive case, and plugged it into my AirPort Extreme. Cheaper than a mini, and far less expensive than an Xserve. To use, just tell iTunes and iPhoto that their libraries are located on the network drive.
I've been saying that for years.
Both Solaris and OS X are based on FreeBESD. Both either use, or are moving to, ZFS. Both now are on x86. Both have brilliant software departments. A lot of people in Sun use Macs.
Apple serves the low end server and workstation market, and consumer markets. Sun starts at the low end server and workstation markets and moves all the way up to the high end.
Apple has little in the way of an enterprise sales and service sector, while that's exactly what Sun is.
Sun's problems now are less related to how poorly they're executing, than it is with the fact that their competitors are much more broadly based than they are, and therefor have much greater sales overall, with the concurrent financial depth that Sun lacks. Right now, Sun is the last major server/workstation vendor left. It's a tough position to be in.
If they were purchased by Apple, and Sun goes for just a few billion right now, Apple could supply that sales and financial investment that Sun needs.
I could see them integrating the OS's over a two year period on the server side, then in another year, in the workstation/client (that's us!) side. This could easily preserve the interoperability of both companies software.
It would give Apple the enterprise and government sales they need to grow in a more reliable way, partly insulated from consumer fads.
It would finally give MS a serious competitor.
Of course, I also dream of Apple and Google merging, along with the purchase of Sun. Sigh!!!
Do any major companies actually use X-Serves in quantity? I figured they'd still be useful for running Windows OS-based products in Virtual Machines. I guess no major companies will be using OSX Server, though. I'm only asking since I don't really have much information to go on. I suppose the usual Apple price premium still applies which would decrease the likelihood of corporations buying Apple equipment.
In weak economic times I wouldn't imagine many companies changing over to Apple servers when their current equipment will do.
A company called xTech uses Xserves to do credit card transactions. It was brought up in a WWDC conference back in 2006. Almost every credit card transaction goes through this system. They called it the aquarium as it was all encased in glass with stacks and stacks of Xserves. I'll see if I can find a picture somewhere. I'm not sure if this system is still up and running or not.