Companies Want Good Enough IT, Not 'Best of Breed'
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are an IT organization accustomed to assembling your systems and software piecemeal using the so-called "best of breed" components on the market, or are one of the major IT players used to supplying such customers, watch out. Best of breed is a dying breed. With IT budgets tight for going on three years now, and decades of history during which so many well-intentioned IT projects failed, the best-of-breed approach to IT is being downshifted to "good enough." READ MORE >

Azul's Network-Attached Processing to Shake Up Server Market
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The advent of n-tier computing, where the database, application, and presentation layers of an application are spread out over multiple, incompatible servers, has allowed much more diverse and flexible applications than would have been possible or affordable using central hosts or even simple client/server architectures. But n-tier architectures have their limitations, and Azul Systems, a secretive startup founded in April 2002, thinks it has an answer to the nightmare of managing those application servers. READ MORE >

Leasing Strategies at the Big Four Server Makers
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last week, I told you about general leasing trends in the IT market and explained that, despite the quickly dropping costs of servers and storage and low interest rates (which makes outright borrowing attractive), the practice of leasing IT technology is growing. Now I have some insight from the captive leasing units of the big four in the server market: IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Dell. READ MORE >

New TPC Benchmarks Are on the Horizon
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Gauging the performance and price/performance of servers using industry-developed, yet open, benchmarks is such an accepted part of the server comparison and acquisition process that many of us take such open benchmarks for granted. There is a cat and mouse game going on between server makers and benchmark administrators, the former always trying to stretch the limits and the latter trying to rein in vendors, while adapting to changes in technology. READ MORE >

  But Wait, There's More

HP Deep Sixes Itanium Workstations . . . Broadcom Supports Linux on RAID Adapters . . . New IBM eServer 326 Ready for Dual-Core Opterons . . . HP Says It Has Converted 200 Sun Shops in 18 Months . . . Iran Considering Dumping Windows for Linux . . . Study Says American High Tech Has Lost 200,000 Jobs . . . Meta Says Passwords Aren't Effective . . . READ MORE >

Reader Feedback and Insights

We value your feedback and insights. Feel free to send a letter to the editor. Letters may be printed, unless otherwise specified, and edited for clarity or length. READ MORE >

Acucorp
Key Information Systems
Open Systems
ShaoLin Microsystems
Novell