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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/22/scc_17_idataplex/

IBM and Dell lick their lips as Microsoft and Google buy billions in gear

By Ashlee Vance in Santa Clara (ashlee.vance@theregister.co.uk)
Published Thursday 22nd May 2008 16:54 GMT

Radio Reg Voracious buyers such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Amazon represent a niche in the server market - a very lucrative niche. So, we've seen companies such as IBM and Dell come out recently with gear aimed right at the service provider set.

Episode 17 of Semi-Coherent Computing takes a look at the "white box killer" hardware available with Chris Hipp (http://hippster.com/) and Dan Olds (http://gabrielconsultinggroup.com/) joining yours truly for an action-packed discussion.

The show starts off by probing IBM's new iDataPlex (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/23/ibm_idataplex/) unit and then moves to Dell's custom Cloud (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/09/dell_container_xs23/) program. We also explore Microsoft's decision to go hog wild (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/02/microsoft_container_data_center/) with data centers in shipping containers.

Overall, these service provider-friendly systems build on a lot of the high performance computing work done over the years at labs and big businesses. So, once again, we're seeing HPC goodness makes its way downstream.

Dan is so enamored with this the trend that he's planning to set up a data center van, which will let him go from customer site to customer site for on location analysis. "All I need from you, Mr. Customer, is an outlet, a hose and perhaps a storm drain," he said.

The show wraps up with a chat about Citrix's struggles to pull meaningful revenue away from VMware. We wonder if Microsoft will have any more luck once it gets its act together.

In addition, we take a brief look at quantum computing start-up D-Wave, which hopes to hit 512 qubits by the end of this year.

Anyway, on to the show.

Semi-Coherent Computing - Episode 17 (http://go.theregister.com/podcast/2008/05/20/scc_17_idataplex.mp3)

Open source types can get Ogged and Vorbed here (http://go.theregister.com/podcast/2008/05/20/scc_17_faithful.ogg), those plagued by low-bandwidth can catch a smaller, crappier quality show here (http://go.theregister.com/podcast/2008/05/20/scc_17_low.mp3) or a monster-sized show here (http://go.theregister.com/podcast/2008/05/20/scc_17_big.mp3).

You can also grab the show off iTunes here (http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=261007462) or subscribe to the show via this feed (http://www.theregister.co.uk/hardware/semi_coherent/podcast.rss).

As always, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see covered in future shows or any special guests you would like to have on the program.

Thanks for your ears. ®

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