InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

IBM this week is shipping a new version of AIX for its RISC serversand a 24-CPU RS/6000 server that the company is pitting against Sun's 64-way Enterprise 10000.AIX 4.3.3 highlights include Workload Manager resource partitioning, which lets users reallocate CPU and memory resources to apps on the fly; improvedcaching; and integrated Internet security. It will also support most Linux apps by early 2000. These features will be integrated into Project Monterey, the Unix operating system for Intel and IBM CPUs being developed by IBM, SCO, and others. It's due out next year.

HP and Sun already offer Unix products with functionality similar to that of Workload Manager. Yet AIX 4.3.3 on IBM's new RS/6000 S80 symmetric multiprocessing server is a powerful match, says Brad Day of Giga Information Group. The S80 runs six to 24 450-MHz PowerPC RS64 III chips that use copper technology for enhanced performance."The combination of the S80 and AIX enhancements gives IBM a Unix system on steroids," says Day. "It puts IBM on the short list with HP and Sun."

The S80 with AIX 4.3.3 starts at $290,000; a high-end S80 will cost half as much as a comparable Sun Enterprise 10000. "When you want to be No. 1, you gun after No. 1. That's why we're conducting aggressive pricing vs. Sun," says Debra Thompson, VP of product marketing for the RS/6000.

Sun has its own upgrade plans, says Jeffrey Bernard, Solaris director of marketing. Solaris 8, due early next year, will dynamically reconfigure system partitions, support moving information among CPUs, and let users install it while the existing operating system runs as a backup.

On Oct. 1, HP will ship enhancements to HP-UX 11. The operating system will include the vendor's E-speak middleware for dynamic brokering of E-services; Netscape Fast Track and Zeus Lite Web servers; and the ability to recognize imminent processor and memory failures. The upgrade will be free to current HP-UX 11 users and will come on HP 9000 servers, including the L series introduced last week, which will have added Internet features such as enhanced Web security software.

The L1000 supports one or two 360-MHz or 440-MHz 8500 PA-RISC chips and 4 Gbytes of memory for less than $16,000. The L2000 can support up to four 360-MHz or 440-MHz CPUs and 8 Gbytes of memory; it's priced at less than $22,000.