apple announced today the next version of their Xserve server platform, a 1U, $3000 unit which nearly doubles the speed of the previous version.

The Leopard version of OS X Server provided a much needed bump in the enterprise capabilities of the operating system and this speed boost shouldn't hurt the case for bringing Apple into the data center, if anyone bothers to make it. Despite their availability on the market for several years now, and the occasional resurgence of speculation as to their value and capabilities, the only high-profile adoption of XServes of late has been the US Army.

It's no mystery why adoption has been slow and it's not much different from why adoption has been slow for OS X on the corporate desktop: Microsoft lock-in makes such changes complex and expensive. While OS X as a server platform does not suffer from the same issues with application compatibility as the desktop version (with a solid BSD Unix base, OS X Server can run pretty much anything that any other Unix server can run) it does suffer from the fact that while it may be easier and sexier to manage, a Linux machine is still a cheaper platform and most of the management features are irrelevant to those applications. The place where it could truly shine, as a mixed-client workgroup server, continues to be dominated by Microsoft if for no other reason than Exchange. Mail server and iCal still have a long way to go before they displace the reliance on Exchange's workgroup features in many organizations.

Technical details to be found in the press release if you're interested.