Appliance: The server of giants

The market for appliance servers is set to grow massively over the coming years, according to IDC report published today.

The study found that appliance servers, which take care of the corporate server infrastructure, are experiencing rapid growth due to the expansion of internet and corporate intranets. IDC said the overall appliance server revenues grew 166 per cent last year and are expected to exceed $31bn by 2005. Appliance servers consist of server hardware components and workload balance software, such as filer appliance server, manufactured by the likes of Compaq, Dell and IBM.