Group Bull SA, an established development partner of IBM in the multi-processor server area, yesterday said that its new 24-way Escala AIX-machines outstrip even IBM’s latest Unix top-end, offering commercial users an e-commerce platform capable of (an as yet unverified) 120,000 TPC-C transactions per minute.
FranceÆs computer champion says the new Escala is the worldÆs fastest commercial Unix server, and it is certainly a major leap forward in terms of BullÆs own high-end offering, stretching the TPC-C performance of its former top-end EPC1200 by close to 400%. However, according to Unix product manager for Bull UK and Ireland, Mike Naylor, there is more than enough power-hunger in the Escala user-base to drive sale for the EPC2400, and he predicted that the machine will win new customers for Bull – especially among corporates consolidating server resources to drive e-commerce apps.
To sharpen the Escala rangeÆs appeal to e-commerce sites, Bull said it has tuned the products clustering and systems management characteristics to make them ômore appropriate to commercialö environments than IBMÆs SP range. It has also worked with BMC to tightly integrate the latter’s Portal systems management suite with the 24-way box, and enlisted BEA to offer component-based Java and Enterprise Java Bean middleware geared to BullÆs own clustering technology. Another edge over IBM in Europe, claimed Naylor, will be BullÆs creation of a 50-strong team of architecture, performance tuning and e-commerce experts and at the Escala support center in Grenoble.
Apart from some own-brand tweaks to its SMP and clustering technology, the new Escala is essentially the same PowerPC RS64 II-based machine that IBM rolled out last month, but because of its clustering enhancements, Bull claims it will still prove better value for money than the IBM machines when it rolls out starting at 360,000 pounds ($580,000) later this month.
