Sun sets on proprietary servers

PERTH’S Ipex is the first in the world to demonstrate a product that marks the beginning of the end for proprietary server platforms.

The Intel Pentium III Xeon 8-way processor server platform is set to cause the demise of ‘locked in’ proprietary enterprise platforms such as HP9000s, Compaq Alphas and Sun Sparcs, according to Ipex technical director Yaron Schwalb.

“Our new Centra 9000 enterprise server platform takes a quantum leap over the proprietary platforms with respect to fault tolerance, high availability and manageability,” Mr Schwalb said.

Intel Asia Pacific technical marketing engineer of its enterprise server group Michael Kosim said Ipex’s approach delivered, not just the validated hardware platform, but the end-to-end platform including operating system and solution stacks.

Ipex, the largest Intel distributor/assembler in Australia, is currently negotiating contracts with Microsoft to lease software.

The 8-way platform comes at an opportune time for Microsoft as they position the next version of the Windows NT operating system, Windows 2000.

Other key Internet service vendors such as Oracle have shown interest in Ipex’s relatively new enterprise systems group.