Apple's Xserve could make inroads in the data center

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February 28, 2005 (Computerworld) -- Last month, Brandchannel.com dubbed Apple Computer Inc. the "brand with the most global impact." But you'd never know it by looking at corporate desktops today.

Windows machines are the undisputed personal computers of choice for corporate IT, the biggest single market for PCs. Research conducted by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC underscores the fact. IDC ranked the maker of Macintosh machines No. 10 on its market-share list in 2004, two spots behind the Chinese company Lenovo Group Ltd.—and the list was prepared before Lenovo's planned acquisition of IBM's PC unit.

Yet despite significant efforts by Windows suppliers, Apple still remains a dominant player in vertical market segments such as publishing and digital media. And with the growing popularity of its low-cost Xserve Unix servers, Apple has an opportunity to compete head-to-head with industry leaders like Dell Inc. inside the data center for general-purpose applications such as e-mail and Web serving.

Where's Mac?

Not surprisingly, according to research from New York-based TrendWatch, 83% of graphic designers, 77% of corporate design departments and 65% of advertising agencies rely on Macintosh computers. And publishers also continue to depend on Apple's machines.

Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer for 800 PCs and 250 Macs at The Dallas Morning News, acknowledges that Windows has comparable applications for the publishing market. But, she says, "those applications don't run as robustly on Windows. They're not as fast or as seamless as on the Mac. We could not replace Macs for PCs."

At The Home Depot Inc., senior engineer Bruce Covey evaluated only Mac options when he upgraded his video production equipment at the company's corporate headquarters in Atlanta. "We never considered the PC option, because it can't do what the Mac does in video production," he says.

Home Depot's video group standardized on dual-processor Mac G5 desktop machines with 2GB of RAM accessing 4TB of storage on Xserve RAID storage. Covey uses Apple's Final Cut Pro as his editing application.

Image Credit: Richard Downs

Apple's embrace of Unix in its Mac OS X operating system gave the company a big boost among scientists who need hefty processing capabilities. Bill Van Etten, who does genetic research at the University of Pittsburgh, attributes the Mac's star power among scientists to the computer's ease of use, a broad set of scientific applications available for the Mac and, most important, its Unix-based operating system.

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