InformationWeek

October 18, 1999

Server Consolidation:
Vendors Step Up With Server Consolidation Programs

By Karen D. Schwartz

Illustration by Valerie Sinclair ardware vendors are seeing new opportunities in a trend that continues to gain steam--the likelihood of businesses consolidating server platforms to save money, modernize IT infrastructures, and reduce administrative burdens. IBM predicts that companies will spend $60 billion to $64 billion on consolidation by next year. Of that amount, IBM says 30% will be spent on server and operating systems consolidation, 20% on software and storage consolidation, and the remaining 50% on consolidation services and consulting.

To grab a piece of that pie, hardware vendors are stepping up with programs that make it easy for companies to determine what they need, buy the hardware, and make any adjustments necessary to their environments to incorporate the new servers.

IBM formed a special unit last year dedicated to helping businesses achieve server consolidation, along with consolidation of a company's related IT infrastructure, such as operating systems, applications, networks, storage systems, and operating procedures. The focus is on analysis and consulting, not just selling hardware, says Rick Fuchs, IBM's VP of worldwide server consolidation.

To that end, IBM has created Align, a repeatable set of methodologies and tools to help it analyze a customer's needs. IBM begins by profiling a company's applications, the servers they run across, the architectures they represent, and the discrete support costs associated with each application. Analysts then map their findings against the customer's current business model. After that, consultants apply a series of intelligent filters to the data model to help determine where centralization should occur. IBM then determines what savings will result from each centralization and helps companies prioritize the project.

This methodology is similar to that offered by other major vendors, including Amdahl, through its Amdahl Global Solutions division, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems. All offer a range of services, from evaluating users' environments to helping customers migrate to a consolidated architecture to managing the new infrastructure.

Most major vendors will provide as much or as little help as a company needs. "If we're using a traditional consolidation methodology that's focused on lowering costs, we might focus just on footprint for a company, helping them restructure how they allocate space within their data center," says Nick van der Zweep, worldwide systems consolidation program manager in HP's Business Critical Computing division. "It depends what they need."

For PageNet, a Dallas provider of wireless messaging services, HP merely provided the servers for its consolidation efforts. The company used Diamond Technologies in New Castle, Del., a third-party integrator, to help it implement its consolidation plans. Diamond Technologies has a particularly broad-ranging role in the project, managing and coordinating all activities associated with development and deployment, and facilitating changes in the company's application suite as much as in its server landscape.

Tim Golden, director of enterprise server product marketing for Compaq, says new technology will provide companies with more ways to consolidate their environment. Golden points to eight-way Windows NT servers as an example. Scalability improvements mean that businesses can support more users on a smaller number of NT servers, he says: A benchmark for SAP R/3 applications found that a Compaq four-processor NT system could support 2,600 users, while its eight-way server could handle 4,500 users.

Internet deployments where tiers of nodes are dedicated to specific functions will keep the server consolidation market strong as well, says Andy Ingram, director of marketing for Sun's enterprise server products. As vertical consolidation removes extraneous layers of servers from the infrastructure, or horizontal consolidation reduces the number of servers on any one tier, users must consider how to strategically position firewalls, for example, to protect the same turf. "The way you consolidate when you factor in things like Web security and firewalls changes everything," Ingram says. "We have an entire strategy revolving around making those kinds of functions facilitate consolidation."

Return to main story, "Server Consolidation: Less Is More."

Illustration by Valerie Sinclair

Back to This Week's Issue
Send Us Your Feedback
Top of the Page