Happy New Year, all. Wayne

...from: http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/30/01FEtoyplats_1.html?s=feature

Innovation trumps commoditization Worthwhile platform and architecture choices abound

By  Tom Yager December 30, 2004

In 2004, we started seeing the products of engineering that went on underground during the recession. Whereas the market as a whole is doing the wait-and-see, early adopters are partying their butts off over true competition in operating systems and CPU architectures, the long-delayed delivery of the Java promise, and the essential paradigm shift from fast processors to fast throughput. Much of the technology that vendors were forced to put in the deep freeze has thawed. In 2005, the rest of IT will see why those forward-looking geeks (present company included) are so giddy.

First, Sun rescued Java by becoming honestly and deeply engaged with the grassroots Java developer community. The impact of the fulfillment of the Java promise extends well beyond open source and academia. Oracle (Profile, Products, Articles) stands out as an example: The vendor now offers its entire commercial Java product line for free download. Oracle permits license-free use of its software for development and testing. You pay only when you deploy, and then only when you deploy to an Oracle-branded server. Expect to see more of the “develop now, pay later” approach to platform promotion in 2005.

PLATFORMS: BEST SERVER HARDWARE Apple Xserve G5: Tightly integrated hardware/OS combo raises the bar for other server makers

BEST BLADE SYSTEM HP Consolidated Client Infrastructure: Combines popular management tools with unrivaled reliability and scalability

BEST OPERATING SYSTEM Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther): Continues to set the standard for simplicity and ease-of-use among 64-bit-capable OSes

BEST VIRTUAL SERVER VMware ESX Server 2.1.1: Enables an extraordinary array of high-availability services and management capabilities

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