Next-Generation Computers

A New Breed in the Computer Biz

For the first time in years, hardware startups are trying to break into the market. Their gambit: Inexpensive special-purpose machines Steve Dewitt remembers an incident that occurred soon after he joined startup Azul Systems three years ago. He walked out to the driveway of his Silicon Valley home to pick up the morning newspaper and ran into a neighbor -- Bob Evans, a legendary former IBM (IBM) executive who oversaw the development of the mainframe computer in the 1960s that led to Big Blue's industry dominance. Dewitt had recently told Evans of Azul's plan to create a radically new server, and Evans had been enthused.

But now that Evans had a few days to mull the plan, Dewitt recalls Evans telling him: "You know, Steve, I hope you realize how incredibly hard it is to create a new computer company. There's just so much that can go wrong."

That's why for the hundreds of tech startups that have come and gone in the past few decades, only a small percentage have tried to build new computer companies. True, plenty of networking startups were created during the buildout of the Internet. And some have even made important technical advances in storage and the packaging of computers. Traditional servers have been shrunk down to the form of so-called blades, about the size of a pizza box and nothing more than circuit cards with powerful processors that can be slipped side-by-side into racks.

LESS CARE AND FEEDING.

But when it comes to fundamentally rethinking the basic gear that makes up the typical corporate data center, not much has happened. Indeed, only one new hardware company has truly hit the big time since 1990: storage systems maker Network Appliance (NTAP).

Yet for the first time in years, a number of ambitious startups are dead set on beating the odds. They're betting that a new generation of powerful chips, the ability to focus on one task -- say, storing data or Web traffic -- and an agnostic approach to operating systems can combine to provide big cost saving. Many of these newfangled devices are built with low-cost, off-the-shelf parts, such as Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) Opteron chips and garden-variety disk drives, just like industry-standard gear from Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and others.

But these machines also feature innovative software, designed to help them accomplish a particular job with far less care and feeding from info-tech staffers. That's critical, since 70% of many companies' IT budgets go into maintaining old gear rather than adding new capabilities. "Our industry has trained its customers to put up with so much pain" in terms of complexity, says Steve Goldman, CEO of Isilon, a startup in this new generation. "That makes it easier for us to look good. Like the old saying goes, 'if you want to look tall and thin, hang around with short fat people.'"

HEAVIER TRAFFIC.

At Azul, Dewitt has turned the blueprint he showed Evans into a server built around a powerful new breed of chips known as multicore processors. Azul's machines are designed to run any software developed with Java-like virtual machine technology -- without a care for the age-old question of whether the server is based on Unix, Windows, or Linux.

Azul just started selling its new machines and is drawing interest from a wide range of customers desperate for lower-cost, more efficient ways of running their IT shops. "General-purpose servers have gotten faster, but just incrementally so," says Steve Lapekas, chief information officer for Pegasus Solutions, a Dallas-based processor of hotel-bookings information. Thanks to the Internet, Pegasus must now handle 16 online inquiries for every room that's booked, up from a four to one ratio a decade ago.

To try to manage all this traffic -- none of which brings in any additional revenue -- he's taking a chance on Azul. He plans to use two of its servers in January. "With these, I can replace almost 10 racks holding 400 servers. It could be very disruptive."..Click  here .... and u want some more