“As time to market becomes more and more critical to companies
hoping to build a Web presence, officials at Cobalt Networks think
they have made it easier and less costly for companies to do so.
Cobalt has integrated network-based applications, such as Web
hosting, e-mail, and file sharing, as well as system and network
setup, into a browser-based graphical-user interface. Its line of
server appliances is being used by a wide range of ISPs across the
world. Steve DeWitt, president and CEO, sat down with InfoWorld
Executive Producer/New Media Katherine Bull to talk about the
server appliance market and what it means for the burgeoning
Internet industry….”
“InfoWorld: What are some of the challenges you’re facing in a
competitive marketplace?”
“DeWitt: Our biggest competition is in the old way of doing
things. We compete against the whole traditional, general-purpose
service model where you have a server platform, and you can imagine
all the people who build the general-purpose server platforms.
You know, operating system on top, the applications layer on top,
and then you tie it all together. That’s the old model.”
“InfoWorld: What is your definition of an appliance?”
“DeWitt: An appliance really is measured by its overall cost of
ownership. What we deliver, fully configured out of the box, is a
purpose-built platform, meaning that the hardware is matched to the
applications. Not any size fits any size. So it’s purpose-built
hardware, an open-source operating system where we’ve taken the
applications that are being delivered, whether they be e-commerce
applications or database applications or streaming applications,
and we’ve integrated them into the operating system.”