Mitsubishi slams Compaq sub-£1K server

Billing its new Apricot FT1200 as a "killer server", Mitsubishi product marketing manager Hans Sparkes was clearly digging at Compaq's ProSignia 200 announcement yesterday when he said that the FT1200 was "a purpose-built server, not a desktop on its side like some others on the market".

Sparkes also took time to swipe at Dell which has recently trumpeted its growth in the server market "We're going head to head with Compaq and Dell and we know we are going to win," he said. "Dell are rattled."

The FT1200 is a 200MHz Pentium Pro-based mini-tower system with 32Mb error-correcting DIMM RAM, integral UltraWide SCSI, support for up to four internal drives, PCI Ethernet, PCI graphics and eight-speed CD-ROM drive. Without disk or operating system, the entry-level configuration costs £1,499 + VAT. The Compaq ProSignia is, by comparison, a 166MHz Pentium-based system without error-correcting memory, UltraWide SCSI or security and space for only two storage drives. With a similar reasonable entry-level configuration, Mitsubishi claims the Compaq would also work out about five per cent more expensive.

The spate of announcements comes at a time when the big guns for going all out for server growth. According to IDC market research, sales of uniprocessor dedicated servers in Western Europe will almost double between 1996 and the end of the century. Driving the market are application servers running on Windows NT and the growth of investment by small and medium-sized businesses. According to the Department of Trade and Industry there are 184,000 businesses with 10-99 staff in the UK.