Sunday, January 11, 2004 |
21:57 - They also serve
http://www.apple.com/xserve/cluster/wgcluster.html
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How well is the Xserve selling?
Not splendidly well, some people say. But numbers are hard to come by in the Xserve's segment of the market. Apple claims to be doing brisk business, with lots of big corporate customers coming to Apple out of the blue with proposals for lucrative deals on the "solutions" level rather than the "we'll buy some computers" level, as-- most wags would agree-- is the way they would want it. However, just as many pundits will grumble that a few big-name customers do not a market segment invasion make, and sniff that the Xserve is doomed to be an expensive failure.
I certainly don't know which it is. But sometimes products speak louder than words.
The Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics provides a faster, easier and lower-cost path to scientific discovery. You’ll get rapid access to data analysis with minimal administrative burden in one comprehensive, industry-leading solution. All starting at $27,999.
They're now making whole new product lines-- like this "Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics", which includes the new Xserve G5 Cluster Node, a specialized low-cost Xserve with stripped-down components and a cluster-optimized airflow design (a life-support system for two more CPUs for the pool, really)-- around what appear to be highly focused customer initiatives. This one's clearly aimed at the BLAST market, which is currently providing Apple with most of its high-performance cluster-computing specs. And the Cluster Node itself is designed for things like university clusters, workgroups, and render farms (hellooo, Pixar).
Some people just find the kind of cool that Apple technology brings to the table to be nigh-irresistible. I mean, just look at iNquiry, a "scalable informatics tool" for biologists that is designed to be deployed in minutes onto a ready-made cluster of Xserves... from an iPod.
Clearly Apple wouldn't be throwing its weight behind fully realized integrated products like the $28K Bioinformatics box without the potential for a major market coup. Somehow I get the feeling that Apple's been making certain inroads into the rackmount server space, not with its story for traditional server applications (though that is hard to dismiss), but with its story for technical and scientific number-crunching capacity.
Once again, they'll be looking at tackling the market from the top down. Hey, it's what they're used to.
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