Midrange Servers Category Profile

The growing popularity of server virtualization and an early emphasis on dual-core x64-based processors are paying dividends for Hewlett-Packard and its partners. With its high-end ProLiant, HP came out on top of the Midrange Servers category in this year's VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC). That's a noteworthy feat, especially considering that some industry observers have questioned whether a platform that's an extension of the x86 architecture even belongs in this category. Yet partners spoke, and the ProLiant placed first.

Interestingly, HP's success with its high-end ProLiant has come at the expense of its other data-center platforms--the legacy HP 9000 and Alpha--and the newer Intel Itanium-based Integrity.

"We're not getting a lot of demand for Itanium," says Stephen Pirolli, a principal at Ask Technologies, a Bala Cynwood, Pa.-based HP and Dell partner. Yet HP executives remain bullish on the new crop of Integrity servers and say they will lead to upgrades from Alpha and RISC-based systems.

Jeff Jamieson, vice president of sales and marketing at Whitlock Infrastructure Solutions, an HP partner based in Annapolis, Md., says he's seeing a growing interest in those servers, but primarily from end users migrating from HP 9000s running HP/UX.

But he says HP, while unwavering in its commitment to Itanium, has never done a good job of marketing the platform. "It's always been a weak link for HP, " Jamieson says. "They let the competition take the lead."

Indeed, while IBM fell from the top of the heap this year, Big Blue's partners are still optimistic about the System p5 (pSeries) and System i (iSeries) lines. In Loyalty, the vendor placed second and third in the field of five, with scores of 88 for System i and 84 for System p5. Thanks to its support for multiple operating systems, the iSeries remains resilient.

"It's probably the most modern of systems architectures around," says Bob Samson, vice president of worldwide sales for IBM's systems and technology group.

In the coming years, however, the price/performance of the x86/x64 platforms promises to change the stakes in the midrange market. Sun Microsystems has picked up share in this segment over the past year, thanks to the success of its new Galaxy line of X64-based AMD Opteron servers. Sun's partners gave the company low marks, though, particularly in Support (58) and Partnership (58).

"If you look at the Sun [Galaxy] product, it's as good if not superior [to competing products]," says Mark Mahovlich, vice president of sales at Cleveland-based Ohio Online. "But Sun is not as strong from a branding perspective. We do more volume with x64 than anything."

Other trends that are driving mid-range servers: double-digit growth in blades and the implementation of virtualization software--notably, from VMware and Microsoft.

"A lot of the talk we have with customers is helping them gain space in the data center through server reduction," says Marty Andrefski, vice president of sales and operations at IntegraOne in Allentown, Pa. "A lot of people want to do it through VMware."

Blade servers pose yet another opportunity for data-center consolidation. While sales in that market are growing markedly, some industry watchers question the idea of putting all of that infrastructure on a common backplane.

As IBM, HP and Sun look to bring multiple platforms into their blade environments in the coming year, it should soon become more apparent what role that will play in the overall consolidation of entry-level and midrange servers.