[Info-vax] Building for Customers, Revenue

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2014-09-13 17:51:39 +0000, JF Mezei said:

> On 14-09-13 12:08, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
>> OS X Server is so massively past VMS now in most ways.  While I'm
>> "unfairly" comparing VMS to OS X Server now, in five or ten years, OS X
>> Server will be closer to where everybody else will probably be,
> 
> Unless Apple changes direction, the "server" version is now nothing 
> more than a few apps added to the desktop version. The last full fledge 
> server was Snow Leopard. The server version is really aimed now at the 
> home server or very small office server, as opposed to a real server in 
> a data centre.

Interesting.  What's the difference between what Snow Leopard could do, 
and what Mavericks Server can do?

Sure, there's no dual power supply server Xserve model available now, 
but then swapping the whole Mac Mini box is pretty easy these days.

Apple never had a blade server...

Oh, and I'm referring to the user interfaces, too — to where folks are 
building servers now, and where single-server management is headed.

Then there's Puppet or Docker or various ways to deal with whole fleets 
of servers, and which is the sort of customer requirement that VSI 
could only hope to have.

> I don't see OS-X competing in the server market anymore.

Folks doing large-scale and custom configurations are typically using 
bespoke versions of Linux or BSD, or Windows Server, and not OS X 
Server.  That's not all that new, either.

For at least the near-term, VSI product volumes — once they're shipping 
software — will won't be near those of OS X Server here, and nowhere 
near the scale of Linux, BSD or Windows Server servers, too.  Dealing 
with mass-scale deployments and the ensuing issues only adds to the 
effort and the problems and the necessary tools.

IIRC, OS X Server Leopard was US$1000 (unlimited users), and Snow 
Leopard was US$500 (unlimited).   For $20 (unlimited), OS X Server on a 
Mac, OS X Server does pretty well.


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