Every company has to make key strategic choices when it comes to building an Infrastructure, and one of the most important selections to be made has always centred on the server technology or technologies to be deployed.

Ever since the undisputed reign of the Mainframes came to an end when midrange systems -- including such beasts as UNIX and VMS -- arrived on the scene, the number of potential selections available to users has continued to grow. For some time there has been speculation about how long UNIX will remain a viable platform. This week has witnessed a fresh outbreak of marketing wars between many of the major UNIX server suppliers that may help answer this question.

The hype and marketing kicked off with the announcement by Sun Microsystems of the launch of the Sun Fire 12000. A simple description of the new server might be that it is, at heart, half of a Sun Fire 15000, better know as the StarCat, the company's top end offering.

Sun has told the world that the new machine can be shipped to customers within 16 days, making this relatively powerful box available very quickly indeed. The server's price is also reported to come in at around fifty percent of that of the StarCat, placing the offerings in the half a million to just over a million dollars price bracket.

Sun has clearly recognised the demand in the market for less expensive machines capable of hosting high availability, critical applications. Interestingly Sun claim that the 12000 can be field upgraded to full StarCat status.

Meanwhile, IBM has brought out additions to its own pSeries UNIX Power4 servers. The new servers fit into the middle bracket of the Regatta range and are expected to start shipping latter this month. They follow on the heals of a raft of pSeries announcements that have made Regatta servers available for a huge swathe of situations.

It is now rumoured that IBM may bring forward announcements on new additions to its iSeries range. Many of these moves have occurred several months in advance of the original road map targets for these machines and indicate that IBM is targeting the UNIX market, and is looking to continue the expansion in its market share that has taken place over the last year or so.

Over the last few months Hewlett Packard, the third member of the heavyweight data centre UNIX server club, has also been active in its marketing of its range of UNIX machines, from entry level servers up to the top end Superdome systems.

Also, this week, Compaq has begun to make available preview models of its RISC based EV7 Alpha Servers that are scheduled for release towards the end of this year. As well as taking a modular approach to system building, the new servers will incorporate 'self-healing technologies' to help simplify system management and ensure maximum availability. This will help to bring Compaq's offerings into line with those of IBM and HP.

It is clear that the vendors of UNIX systems are becoming very aggressive despite the effects of world's economic gloom. However it is pretty clear that UNIX is here to stay for the foreseeable future.