Earlier this year, I briefly wondered if we were on the cusp of a desktop refresh cycle. No such refresh has happened. But even as I say that, may I point out that volume-based servers are experiencing their own refresh phenomenon?
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| HEATHER CLANCY Can be reached via e-mail at hclancy@cmp.com. |
Pent-up interest in dual-core technology and virtualization as well as real-world concerns over heat and power management have contributed to those overhauls. “This whole thing of performance-per-watt in the data center is gigantic,” says Joe Toste, vice president of marketing at Equus Computer Systems, Minneapolis. “When you’re looking at desktops, the desktop refresh is five years. And we’re seeing people throwing away 1U application database servers that aren’t even two years old because they can’t have these very hot systems in the data center.”
Forrester Research reports, by the way, that 75 percent of corporate prospects are aware of virtualization, another big data center consolidation driver, and 26 percent have implemented some form of the technology. Another 8 percent plan to spend on virtualization sometime this summer.
I got another insta-reality check on the interest in volume servers when CRN Research Editor Jeanette Boyne posted a story a week ago that dove deeper into Sun’s Opteron-based server results for the first quarter. Seems Sun has been able to hold a higher average selling point for its Galaxy line, even though that differential is now slipping. Over the Memorial Day weekend, though, that story became one of our top five most-read articles on crn.com, a spot it held for most of last week.
Seems to me the stars are aligned for those with knowledge of volume server platforms and skills in virtualization, storage or other information management applications. I look forward to more activity in coming months, especially now that Intel is turning up the heat on AMD with its latest dual-core technology.
What’s your server refresh argument? Write to HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, at hclancy@cmp.com.
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