Intergraph Computer Systems – the firm which successfully bet the farm on Windows NT and Intel four years ago – is gambling again, this time by entering the commodity server market against the likes of Compaq Computer Corp and Hewlett-Packard Inc. The Intergraph Corp subsidiary has sold servers in the past but only pushed them as part of its niche CAD/CAM and GIS software systems. More recently it’s been tickled pink to see its server revenues double annually with very little marketing and now has launched a separate server division to storm the market, leveraging the fact that it designs its own motherboards, which it claims perform better than generic, Intel boards. The server division will have about 100 staff and be run by Lee Hanson, formerly of Sun Microsystems Inc. Huntsville, Alabama-based Intergraph, which saw revenues of $1bn in 1995, reported server sales of $90m last year, or about 20% of its hardware sales. The firm expects a 50% increase in server revenues over the next year. Intergraph is offering its existing 200MHz Intel Pentium Pro servers and two new models, the InterServe 650 and 660 servers, which have up to four processors, up to 4Gb RAM and up to 1Tb disk space. The two servers start at $50,200 and $64,800 respectively. Intergraph servers are priced somewhat higher than its competitors, but the company didn’t rule out future price cuts. The servers are available now, but Intergraph won’t kick off its server division marketing campaign until the first quarter of next year.
