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Compaq versus Sun

Library Systems Newsletter [November 2000]

A library that had received proposals from vendors of automated library systems recently asked whether it should consider a vendor that had bid Compaq Alpha hardware because the library was under the impression that Sun and Hewlett-Packard, the hardware products, offered by all the other vendors, were much stronger players in the server market. The response was two-fold:

  1. If the vendor of the automated library system is willing to guarantee reliability and response times for at least five years-as long as the library keeps the system under maintenance— any one of several hardware platforms is a safe choice. The important thing is that the hardware platform is one with which the vendor is familiar and is regularly bid by it.
  2. Rumors about Compaq once again becoming a PC company are not reliable. IDC, a major market research -company recently reported worldwide server revenues for 1999. IBM led the market with $13.2 billion in sales, Compaq was second with $8.4 billion, and Hewlett-Packard and Sun followed with $8.2 and $7.2 million respectively. And what of Dell? It ranked fifth with server sales of $2.6 billion.

Hewlett-Packard and Sun hardware are favored but that's no reason for a library to reject an otherwise attractive proposal because it uses the hardware platform from Compaq or from IBM—or even Dell for smaller systems.

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Publication Year:2000
Type of Material:Article
Language English
Published in: Library Systems Newsletter
Publication Info:Volume 20 Number 11
Issue:November 2000
Page(s):87
Publisher:American Library Association
Place of Publication:Chicago, IL
Notes:Howard S. White, Editor-in-Chief; Richard W. Boss, Contributing Editor
Subject: Server hardware
ISSN:0277-0288
Record Number:8161
Last Update:2024-11-23 21:40:33
Date Created:0000-00-00 00:00:00
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