keith, sgolds
From your link: The eServer 325 is designed for the demanding environments of scientific and technical computing customers. Iaw IBM decided to position this product for a segment targeted by Itanium. Although that is good to built up reputation, it creates very low volume. Not exactly where AMD intended to go with Opteron.
Any low-end server configuration is not even announced.
A blade server "under consideration" is exactly what I mean by lukewarm.
I understand pretty well what IBM plays here: Let Intel pay for NOT offering Opterons in the segments where the money is by delivering Xeons for fractions of listprices; enabling IBM to attack the DELL-territory. Yeah, I would have done exactly the same - as long as no competitor makes any move towards Opterons.
As for realistic expectations, you are right.
Its just frustrating to see a clearly superior product held in single digits MSS - or more precise realizing the big boys play games around it. Even more precise: Their customers let them go with it.
Again, you are right about realistic expectations. It is not exactly the first time that it happens in this industry, so I should have known better.
K.