Every Manager's Guide to Information Technology:

Extract (8): Servers

Servers are computers that, as the word suggests, provide services to clients-hence the term client/server computing, which is emerging as mainstream technology for organizations moving away from large-scale mainframes to lower-cost microprocessor technology and high-speed telecommunications links. These links share information and software (stored on file and application servers) and connect users to each other and to remote software and communications services (communications servers).

Basically, a server is a specialized, souped-up PC with lots of connections for communications links, far more speed, internal memory, and disk storage so that it can efficiently serve many users at once. Servers also have a wide range of software features that remove the need to install an operating system on each PC. Instead, the server provides a central management capability. Souping up the hardware means adding chips to give a PC race car speed and efficiency.

The same firms that are leaders in PC hardware are competing for the same spot in the server market, obviously because top-end machines provide higher prices and profit margins than do commodity desktop PCs. Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM are thus all players. Software companies also provide server packages, targeted to work with specific computer operating systems, data-base management systems, or groupware systems. Servers are highly specialized devices that vary widely in capability and cost. A $2,500 PC is big and fast enough for a small department, but a heavy-duty server that links workstations to data bases with high transaction volumes can add several zeroes to that price. For example, Hewlett-Packard's HP 9000 E-Class server, targeted to small businesses, costs $4,000. Sun's SPARCcenter 2000 server costs $1.2 million and is targeted at the same business applications as the smaller HP machine, but it handles far more users.

Personal computers have created a revolution in providing computing power at your fingertips. Servers in many ways create an even bigger revolution by bringing information, applications, and communications to those fingers.

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