The company has been able to run a number of newer Web-type applications on its IBM mainframe without having to add servers. "We've had mainframes here since the early 1970s, and we still have a lot of homegrown applications running on there that are critical to our business."
But for companies without an existing investment in mainframes, the continuing surge of new server technologies tends to drive data-center design. Many are investing in powerful new machines called "blade" servers that essentially contain the guts of several PCs packed onto a single card (as opposed to the more "traditional" — if one can use that word in IT — rack-mounted server unit).
Ultimately, these machines offer the power of a supercomputer at far less cost. "Blade servers use very standard elements to optimize space, power, and cooling," says Anil Vasudeva, president and principal analyst at Imex Research in San Jose, California. The modular servers' flexibility means they can be configured into various telecom, networking, or storage modules.
Blade servers can be harnessed to run any number of computing power-hungry applications, including the high input/output requirements of online transaction processing, decision-support systems with online analytical processing, and on-demand video-streaming applications that require high bandwidth. The impact of blade servers "will be truly profound," adds Vasudeva.
Blades are very much in keeping with the continuing commoditization of the server market. Low-end machines have plunged in price to the point where some observers refer to them as "disposable." Once expensive and bulky, today's servers are priced so low that if one fails, it's more economical to replace it than to fix it.
In some cases, the spares are already installed in standby mode, waiting to be switched on. Dell Computer Co.'s lowest-priced server sells for $349, including rebates. As recently as the late 1990s, most servers typically were priced in the $12,000 to $100,000 range.
Regardless of what hardware one finds in the data center, the odds are increasingly good that it will be running some version of Linux, the legendarily "free" operating system that seems to win new converts — even among vendors — every day. Linux isn't totally free, of course; when companies adopt it, they typically spring for maintenance and support services in order to have a vendor on call. But there is no license charge, and for that reason alone most large companies are giving Linux at least a chance.
Some have found that its associated costs — such as consultants to install it and hiring new employees or training current staff to use it — can swallow up much of the savings. "We asked ourselves if this could possibly be a replacement strategy to drive our costs down," says Ann Turnbull, first vice president and IS manager at Mellon Financial Corp., in Pittsburgh. "We figured that the cost of conversion would outweigh any savings over a two-to-three-year period."
Despite a surfeit of media attention, Linux has not in fact taken over the world; it accounts for just 5 percent of the server market. But its momentum is unmistakable, and even Sun, which has long touted its Solaris operating system, now offers Linux-based systems on the low end.
Linux is also making gains on the high end, as that endlessly adaptable mainframe proves a viable platform for the software. Winnebago jumped on the bus nearly three years ago, using mainframe-based Linux for such applications as Web serving, file sharing, and other Internet-related functions, and other mainframe shops are following suit.
More typical, however, is Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. "Our systems administrators are trying to learn and experiment with a version of Linux," says John Mitchell, vice president of IT at the Findlay, Ohio, tire manufacturer. "We don't know if we want to bet the company on Linux yet." But many analysts expect that following a suitable period of tire-kicking, most companies will increase their reliance on Linux, perhaps not on the desktop, where Windows reigns supreme, but certainly within the data center.
Centralization entails software decisions beyond the operating system, of course. Oracle Corp., for one, is promoting "single-instance" software, whereby customers can run all their operations using one copy of its enterprise applications.
Always happy to hold itself up as an example to follow, Oracle got single-instance religion a couple of years ago when it found it was running some 64 databases worldwide. "We had essentially one per country," says Steve Miranda, vice president for applications development at the Redwood Shores, California, company.
No more. Today Oracle has reduced 64 sites to just 3, and will soon be reliant on a single data center in Austin, Texas, with a redundant site at the ready in the event of disaster. Fifteen of Oracle's large multinational customers are following suit. "The majority of our customers are in a similar boat, with their ERP systems installed multiple times throughout their enterprise," adds Miranda.
Besides getting rid of redundant hardware and systems, companies find that this kind of centralized approach makes it easier to perform such reporting functions as global audits. The advent of Web-based technologies does, in theory, make a single virtual data center out of widely distributed computing resources, but proponents of the single instance argue that a single installation is rigid enough to enforce processes while remaining flexible to financial practices.
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