Technology planning must emphasize server evolution (e.g., PCI Express), rather than a revolutionary approach with native InfiniBand Architecture.

Meta trend
Business brand image will depend on users' quality of experience, with infrastructure scalability and availability being critical prerequisites. Robust infrastructure will be implemented via a multi-tier mix of small Web and application servers ("scale out") and large back-end DBMS servers ("scale up") that leverage an integrated storage-area network/network-attached storage (SAN/NAS) tier. Operational best practices minimizing total cost of ownership and planned downtime will mature by 2002/03, along with robust cluster capabilities for Unix (2002/03) and Windows (2004/05).

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Through 2007/08, Peripheral Components Interface (PCI) derived technology (PCI-X) will be prevalently deployed in server platforms within infrastructure projects. PCI will support current lower-bandwidth applications until a compelling need for increased I/O, rich-data types (audio and video), or a new form factor (smaller servers) causes a full migration to technologies such as PCI Express (formerly 3GIO--Third Generation I/O). These applications are more demanding of the server hardware, particularly the I/O. Nevertheless, for applications that require more than PCI can deliver in I/O bandwidth or other features, new solutions are evolving. The InfiniBand architecture (IBA) had been the technology touted to provide the next level of performance, yet simpler extensions of PCI itself will prove to be the better evolutionary solution for at least three to four more years for all but a few applications that need more than current PCI.

InfiniBand issues
IBA is now really a server vendor issue for the next two to three years and will not become an IT organization (ITO) issue until 2005/06. Through 2004, server interconnect--Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and Fibre Channel--will require a higher-bandwidth I/O subsystem than PCI can satisfy. Initially, this requirement for greater I/O looked as though it would be satisfied with InfiniBand technologies, but our research indicates that ITOs are not inquiring about IBA, and moreover, there seems to always be a "who is going first?" sentiment with IBA. Was it going to be a server-to-server, a server-to-storage, or a server-to-network interconnect? It has turned out to be none of these, because PCI and other established de facto standards have been extended. InfiniBand is a technology looking for a problem to solve. In addition, vendor marketing tried to establish InfiniBand as an end-all, be-all technology that never materialized from lack of clear value and global economic conditions.

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