Issue #6

The server market's growth remains strong overall, but one of the hottest bands within the server spectrum is the "value server," the affordable yet high-performance design best suited to SMBs. There are many hardware options available for resellers targeting this segment. We believe the best value proposition (never mind the highest availability) rests with Intel's newest wave of Xeon processors, chipsets, and motherboards. Whether you're targeting single pedestals or rack clusters, the innovations here will help you win business and boost your clients' growth.

History doesn't always repeat itself. In 2002, a combination of factors led to a setback in the fortunes of Intel's Xeon server/workstation processor line. With the Core microarchitecture revamp in early 2006 came a steep improvement in Intel's server efforts. The server/workstation space continues to be very competitive, but Andy Grove's famous quotation is truer now than ever. "Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive." Since 2005, Intel has resumed a firm grip on its paranoid roots, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the top-to-bottom refresh of Intel's server product family.

When you start talking to your customers about servers, they already know that the exciting stuff happens inside the box. It’s easy to upsell quad-core CPUs when the chips provide so much more processing power—even in slim 1U boxes—than single- or even dual-core designs. Of course, SMBs are going to perk up when you show them how much money they can save using enterprise SAS and low-cost nearline SATA storage in the same system rather than a bloated array of SCSI disks.