Some critics might carp that these products are merely smaller editions of the rack-mount servers that have been around seemingly forever. But big OEMs certainly are treating the emerging appliance market very seriously. Similarly, Dell has been incrementally unfurling a series of single-purpose devices. Seattle Light and Interhop Network Services, a Canadian ISP, both have deployed Dell s caching appliance. Server appliances also could prove popular with ASPs, which sometimes need to rapidly expand their back offices using easily managed hardware.
Some players insist that there s money to be made in the consumer space, too.
Camillo Martino, marketing director in National Semiconductor s Information Appliance Group, foresees revenue opportunities for service providers as well as merchants in the consumer space. National Semi has been talking to service providers like AOL and MSN about subsidizing consumer purchases of Net appliances. Under that strategy, consumers would get rebates on appliances they buy. In return, providers would get long-term commitments for use of their ISP services. A survivor's guide.