As Janet Matsuda, SGI's director of Graphics Product
Marketing, says: "Modularity offers both savings and scalability so that
customers don't waste their money on what they don't want and can spend it on
what they do want." Debra Goldfarb, group vice president at analyst firm
IDC, agrees: "Modular computing empowers end users to build the kind of environment
that they need not only today but over time.To keep up with computing demand while
operating within restricted budgets, IT must find ways to optimally use computing
resources and reduce people costs. There are many areas of improvement. As data
centers have moved toward servers and away mainframes, IT has found that some
mainframe capabilities weren't available on servers. A glaring example is that
smaller servers were unable to rapidly obtain more processing power to accommodate
peaks in computing demand.
As applications became more transactional, for example
with customers entering information via the Web, these peaks in computing demand
became more visible. During peak demand, customers saw their transactions slow
down. In situations where these transactions affect the bottom line, as when customers
enter purchases, prompt processing becomes vital to the business.As the number
of customers using Web services has increased, the peaks in computing demand became
more intense and more frequent. Consequently, customers more frequently saw declines
in performance.
