“A new survey by Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG) of Beaverton,
Ore. reveals most IT managers and data center managers echo the
sentiments of Rhett Butler at the end of “Gone with the Wind” when
it comes to which server vendor they prefer: Frankly, they don’t
give a damn.“Out of about 200 respondents, only 5 percent are single-vendor
shops. Another 23 percent use boxes from two vendors. 32 percent
have servers from three vendors, and a further 32 percent have four
OEMs represented in their IT department. The remaining 8 percent
have servers from five or more vendors.“”Customers aren’t standardizing on a particular brand of x86
system,” said Dan Olds, principal at GCG. “Only a tiny number of
customers have settled on a single x86 system provider, despite
every effort by vendors to convince them to do so such as financial
inducements, systems management that makes it easier to handle
large numbers of servers from a single family, and blade form
factors that would tend to yield a bit of vendor lock-in.”