Much has been said about the move towards virtualised systems, but there is another development that could be equally important and, in some ways, far more empowering for IT managers. This is the trend for dedicated, single-function servers.
There is a growing number of computer appliances that package all the tasks associated with a specific job. If well-designed and engineered, these can save companies the time and development resources that would otherwise be needed to build such functionality from the ground up.
The notion of a single-function server appliance is not new. Vendors such as Cisco have developed profitable businesses by selling kit such as network routers – the classic single-function server appliance. And such vendors offer an important lesson – that appliances become popular when they are based on accepted standards.
Specialised appliances such as Conformative’s XML accelerators and Neteeza’s database accelerators are increasingly common. Security appliances are also taking off, provided by vendors such as Network Engines, which aims at the Microsoft marketplace; and nCipher, which targets document security and uses Adobe’s LiveCycle Security Server.
An interesting extension of the appliance concept is to create packaged “appliance-like” functionality in software – an example of this would be the 40 or so pre-configured virtual machines available for free download from VMware. These include several open-source firewalls, commercial database evaluation systems and even a voice over IP (VoIP) server.
An important element of such “virtual appliances” is their use of standardised virtual hardware. As a result, firms only have to install free server virtualisation tools to use such appliances. The importance of virtualisation is highlighted by VMware’s recent sponsorship of a competition to develop new appliances to run in virtualised environments. And firms are increasingly deploying blade servers, which can provide a platform for software appliances.
Not only can appliances save IT managers’ time and money, they also offer them more choice.
In the long run, appliances in hardware and software will loosen the hold of some of the major IT vendors and their costly and imprisoning integration services. If firms can build complex application environments from off-the-shelf appliances integrated into standardised infrastructure, the days of handing over blank cheques for integration projects could be coming to a close.
