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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1305
Xserve: "Like a BNW Engine - Fast, Safe and Reliable"
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
November 27th 2002
Xserve for some firms beats out Dell, IBM on value, reliability.
Integration is the key component of Xserve, according to Gartner analyst Tony Adams,
who points at the cohesiveness between Mac OS X and the hardware under Xserve's hood.
This, says Adams, is the enterprise selling point, in an interview in a story at
Newsfactor.
"With the conjoinment of [its] operating system and hardware, we see a much more
complete form of support and service because there's a single point of
accountability," Adams says in the article.
Bent Toker, VP of Operations at Scitx, a web-hosting company, likens Xserve to a BMW
engine and says that OS X was the key reason behind his firm's switch. The Mac GUI on
BSD Unix was the clincher.
AppleCare Premium for Xserve is inexpensive too, says Adams of Gartner. Less than
$1,000 gives a firm a 3-year support package and 24/7 phone/mail tech support. For
Adams, this kind of package doesn't find much competition, particularly in light of
the price.
At Toker's company, they weighed up Dell and IBM server options before choosing
Xserve.
Analysis: Apple almost tripled its server sales in the most recent quarter, which was
impressive, despite the fact they're coming off a very low base.
At the prices Apple charge, Xserve (if you factor in the R&D and marketing behind it,
is a loss leader. Sure, it shares mobo design with G4 to a large extent, and the
unlimited client license costs little to virtually give away, but you've still got to
design and build these things in relatively small numbers, which means they have to
use as many off-the-shelf and Mac parts-bin components as possible. That despite some
limitations Apple have produced such an impressive package that has, by and large,
attracted such plaudits from users and media alike speaks volumes for its
design/price/value equation.
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