moved: Segmenting the server market for XSERVE.
This is a spin-off from the G5 thread. I've put it in here because most people seem to be from a tech-background.
There are many ways to segment a market. Depending upon what you want to do, you can segment a market any way you want, as long as you can profile it properly and the data is accurate.
I'm going to quote Amorph's post here:
[quote]
When you do post this post you're promising, be sure to say what you mean. "The server market" is a lot different from "the UNIX market" or "the UNIX server market," or "the market that ships with UNIX and UNIX-like OS'." If you take the stance that neither Linux or BSD is a proper UNIX (which they aren't), then the BSDish OS X doesn't qualify either. So if you look at someone measuring "the UNIX market" you have to check what they mean by "UNIX."
Also, restricting the analysis to "the UNIX market" comes with a price: Nobody is locked into neat categories, because it's common for servers to run different OS' than all of the machines around them, and most server OS' overlap heavily in terms of what they are capable of. The high end, SVR4-based UNIX market - SGI's IRIX, Sun's Solaris, IBM's AIX, HPaq's Tru64 and HP/UX - is bleeding share, which is going to Windows, Linux and BSD servers. There is also a long-standing and accelerating move from Windows to Linux and BSD. The free UNIX-like OS' are hard to track, because they are frequently installed after the fact on servers that shipped with another OS, and on machines that weren't considered servers when they were shipped: lots of cast-off desktops get repurposed for file, print, and intranet web serving duties.
So when you're looking at how Apple is doing in this market, you have to consider that the server market is very fluid right now, and realigning itself across categories. Things are happening that nobody would have predicted a few years ago, like a resurgence in sales of IBM's mainframe lines. Mainframes were dismissed as dinosaurs, but they're coming back. VMS, which was nearly cancelled a few years ago, now has a sizable chunk of the uptime-critical market, and is enjoying a resurgence as a database platform.
Also, server customers are conservative. Unproven technology and unestablished companies are treated skeptically, because reliability, uptime, and support are not optional in this space. Apple came into the fastest-growing segment of the server market (the low end, UNIX-like/Windows segment) with hardware that had never seen the light of day before backed up by an enterprise support structure that literally hadn't existed the year before, and stamped with a brand that was actively scorned until very recently. Given that, with a few exceptions (mostly in biotech and the sciences, where Apple has a much better reputation), curious IT people are buying an Xserve or two, setting them to non-critical tasks, and watching them. In other words, current sales reflect early adopters willing to try this new thing out despite all the strikes against it (none of which, notice, have anything to do with the Xserve's potential as a server). If the word over time from these early adopters is that the Xserve is compatible, easy to maintain and stable - and that OS X isn't a damn thing like MacOS in the ways that IT people care about - then you'll see sales spike as the wait-and-see, conservative customers (the bulk of the server market) adopt it in earnest and set it to real work. If not, well, no spike in sales, and Apple goes back to the drawing board.
<hr></blockquote>
Okay, I haven't had time to really digest this (post) yet, but the topic deserves it's own thread. (UBB doesn't have a split function I guess).
Really quick questions:
1. Where does Apple fit in? Is it competing within the PC server market only? How big is this sandbox and who's playing in it already?
2. How does your vision of the server market differ from professional industry analysts and can it be profiled?
3. Based on yours or any other market analysis, what is Apple's strategy for growth?
These questions are for me and anyone else.
amorph-- stay cool
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
[ 12-08-2002: Message edited by: MacLuv ]
[ 12-08-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
There are many ways to segment a market. Depending upon what you want to do, you can segment a market any way you want, as long as you can profile it properly and the data is accurate.
I'm going to quote Amorph's post here:
[quote]
When you do post this post you're promising, be sure to say what you mean. "The server market" is a lot different from "the UNIX market" or "the UNIX server market," or "the market that ships with UNIX and UNIX-like OS'." If you take the stance that neither Linux or BSD is a proper UNIX (which they aren't), then the BSDish OS X doesn't qualify either. So if you look at someone measuring "the UNIX market" you have to check what they mean by "UNIX."
Also, restricting the analysis to "the UNIX market" comes with a price: Nobody is locked into neat categories, because it's common for servers to run different OS' than all of the machines around them, and most server OS' overlap heavily in terms of what they are capable of. The high end, SVR4-based UNIX market - SGI's IRIX, Sun's Solaris, IBM's AIX, HPaq's Tru64 and HP/UX - is bleeding share, which is going to Windows, Linux and BSD servers. There is also a long-standing and accelerating move from Windows to Linux and BSD. The free UNIX-like OS' are hard to track, because they are frequently installed after the fact on servers that shipped with another OS, and on machines that weren't considered servers when they were shipped: lots of cast-off desktops get repurposed for file, print, and intranet web serving duties.
So when you're looking at how Apple is doing in this market, you have to consider that the server market is very fluid right now, and realigning itself across categories. Things are happening that nobody would have predicted a few years ago, like a resurgence in sales of IBM's mainframe lines. Mainframes were dismissed as dinosaurs, but they're coming back. VMS, which was nearly cancelled a few years ago, now has a sizable chunk of the uptime-critical market, and is enjoying a resurgence as a database platform.
Also, server customers are conservative. Unproven technology and unestablished companies are treated skeptically, because reliability, uptime, and support are not optional in this space. Apple came into the fastest-growing segment of the server market (the low end, UNIX-like/Windows segment) with hardware that had never seen the light of day before backed up by an enterprise support structure that literally hadn't existed the year before, and stamped with a brand that was actively scorned until very recently. Given that, with a few exceptions (mostly in biotech and the sciences, where Apple has a much better reputation), curious IT people are buying an Xserve or two, setting them to non-critical tasks, and watching them. In other words, current sales reflect early adopters willing to try this new thing out despite all the strikes against it (none of which, notice, have anything to do with the Xserve's potential as a server). If the word over time from these early adopters is that the Xserve is compatible, easy to maintain and stable - and that OS X isn't a damn thing like MacOS in the ways that IT people care about - then you'll see sales spike as the wait-and-see, conservative customers (the bulk of the server market) adopt it in earnest and set it to real work. If not, well, no spike in sales, and Apple goes back to the drawing board.
<hr></blockquote>
Okay, I haven't had time to really digest this (post) yet, but the topic deserves it's own thread. (UBB doesn't have a split function I guess).
Really quick questions:
1. Where does Apple fit in? Is it competing within the PC server market only? How big is this sandbox and who's playing in it already?
2. How does your vision of the server market differ from professional industry analysts and can it be profiled?
3. Based on yours or any other market analysis, what is Apple's strategy for growth?
These questions are for me and anyone else.
amorph-- stay cool
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
[ 12-08-2002: Message edited by: MacLuv ]
[ 12-08-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
Comments
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
[quote]Originally posted by MacLuv:
<strong> ... I've read your post and I'm actually preparing a case right now... as people like bashing brains in here i'm trying to make it as "airtight" as I can-- I'll post another thread when it's done. It will address a lot of stuff mentioned in this thread. I've been working on this for a long time, actually, so we'll see what happens. </strong><hr></blockquote>
[ 12-08-2002: Message edited by: MacLuv ]</p>
When you do post this post you're promising, be sure to say what you mean. "The server market" is a lot different from "the UNIX market" or "the UNIX server market," or "the market that ships with UNIX and UNIX-like OS'." If you take the stance that neither Linux or BSD is a proper UNIX (which they aren't), then the BSDish OS X doesn't qualify either. So if you look at someone measuring "the UNIX market" you have to check what they mean by "UNIX."</strong><hr></blockquote>
Trying to segment the market by your methodology would take forever, confuse decision makers/analysts, and cost too much money to maintain perspective.
Gartner's says the market is:
High End Platforms
- High-End Availability Servers
- High-End Operating Systems
- High-End Unix Servers
- Mainframe Computers
- Supercomputers
Mid-Range Platforms- Mid-Range High-Availability Servers
- Mid-Range Intel Servers
- Mid-Range Operating Systems
- Mid-Range RISC Servers
- Server Appliances
Storage-- AS/400
-- Linux
-- Unix
-- Windows 2000
-- Windows NT
- Storage Components
- Storage Systems
Server Operating Systems- AS/400
- Linux
- Mainframe
- Network Operating Systems
- Unix
- Windows
IDC segments the market by $$ as follows:Appliance/Entry: ~ $100,000
Mid-Level: $100,001- $ 1 Million
High-End: above $1 Million
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
[ 12-08-2002: Message edited by: MacLuv ]</p>