Intel Pushes Specs For Server Appliances

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December 14, 1998 (12:00 AM EST)

By Marcia Savage ,

Intel is looking to ensure product reliability and broad application support for server "appliances" by teaming up with other industry leaders to develop a set of platform specifications.

The goal is to produce a design guide that defines common hardware platform basics for the emerging network-based server-appliance market, said executives at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker.

Server appliances are custom-built to perform a single function or a limited set of functions, said Lauri Minas, general manager of Intel's server-industry marketing operation. They don't require any configuration by the end user. Businesses now use them mainly as Web servers, caching servers, e-mail servers, or for a firewall.

Minas said server appliances are a growing market, especially with the growth of the Internet. However, there is only a limited number of products for the new market produced by a handful of companies using different software, she said. Some of the larger ISPs, telecommunications vendors, and larger companies with IT departments are holding back on buying the devices until they see some industry standards established, she added.

Providing standards will help ISVs develop products for the market by giving them an idea of what the systems will look like, Minas said. That, in turn, helps hardware vendors by providing them with several applications they can choose to load on their system.

The end users, IT managers, ISPs, and telecom vendors will reap the benefit of a broader choice of products, she said.

"So instead of choosing from one or two small vendors you hope are going to be here in five years, now there's a bunch of companies with products," said Minas. "They can really pick and choose which solution is best for their business."

Companies supporting the Server Appliance Design Guide include Cobalt Networks, Dell, Dialogic, Digex, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent, Novell, Oracle, PSINet, and SCO.

The first specification development tools and test suites are scheduled for release in the second quarter of 1999.

James Staten, industry analyst at Dataquest, in San Jose, Calif., said the standards Intel wants to develop are needed.

"Right now, most of the players in this space are hand-building or not yet at the process where they can outsource the construction of their appliances," Staten said. "Part of the problem is you can't take a traditional server board and build an appliance with it because it's got a bunch of extraneous components you don't need," he said. "And no one is really building motherboards without those components you can buy in volume, and that's what's really necessary and that's what Intel's trying to push."