By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
September 9, 2010

As if the server market isn’t saturated enough with different offerings from various vendors, PC-maker Acer recently outed their business-class server offerings, initially targeted at SMBs.

Best known for their personal computing portfolio, Acer enters the server market with four core offerings: tower servers, blade servers, rack servers, and their own flavor for high-density computing users, the Acer Gemini servers.

This is not the first time Acer is entering the server market, however. “The first time was more than 10 years ago,” recalled Manuel Wong, general manager of Acer Philippines. Wong said the offerings didn’t take flight in the country then, but that they are re-launching now “because this is a new server line.”

Wong admitted that despite their continued leadership in the consumer products market, “in the commercial area, we have a big room to grow and improve.”

Currently, notebooks and netbooks make up the bulk of the tech vendor’s market share at 36%, with desktops and monitors following closely at 14% and 10%, respectively. Acer also continues to make strides in the projector segment, with at least 40% market share.

With its new server offerings, Acer is determined to take a bite off the largely-divided server market pie.

To achieve this, Anthony Gob, assistant product manager for server and storage solutions, Acer Philippines, said the company’s strategy for the commercial market will be on focused, simple, and innovative products—“solutions that work out of the box,” he pointed out.

Acer’s servers come with various management applications that help SMBs take control of their servers. This includes Smart Setup, which automates the installation of the server through a user-friendly GUI; Smart Console, a web-based management control facility which allows administrators monitor their servers remotely; and Smart Server Manager, a scaled-up management utility for firms with more than three servers.

All of these utilities come packaged with their server products, Gob clarified.

Acer likewise hopes to gain its server market share by introducing products at a very competitive price point. “Users already know or are using the top three server brands. We want to slowly let end-users convert to Acer servers through our competitive prices,” Gob said.

An entry-level tower server from Acer, for instance, utilizing a dual-core Lindale chip from Intel, retails at only P29,900. They come with a three-year warranty on parts, one-year warranty on labor, and one-year on-site support, so SMBs wouldn’t find it hard to support their servers.

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