By Daniel Eran Dilger

Published: 04:00 AM EST (01:00 AM PST)

Leveraging third party server support

Apple's biggest problem with its server offerings may be that the company is trying to run the entire show. There are some third party server products designed for use with Mac OS X Server, including IBM's Informix Dynamic Server for online transaction processing, or Oracle's Database 10g product. Users are also free to install their own open source projects and develop their own custom server apps using the tools Apple bundles with Server, including Perl, PHP, Ruby and Rails.

What Mac OS X Server is really missing however is a third party ecosystem of supporting players who have a vested interest in selling the operating system. IBM and Oracle are supporting Mac OS X largely just to cover the bases. Apple lacks any real motivation for third parties to actually deliver server software solutions based on Mac OS X technologies.

That could change if the company adopts an iPhone App Store for its server platform, something the company is also expected to do for its desktop Mac platform. Currently, Apple bundles a variety of open source engines into Mac OS X Server and presents a cohesive administration interface for them with Server Admin, along with a dramatically scaled down admin tool called Server Preferences, which is designed for the entry level users with only the most basic needs.



This modular architecture could easily be retrofitted to support third party server applications simply by adding a download and configuration storefront adapted from iTunes. Open Source developers could customize existing products to integrate with Mac OS X's directory services in order to inherit existing user accounts and permissions and to make it easy to secure the server using the existing interface in Server Admin for setting Service Access Control Permissions to limit administrative rights to individual server features.

Just as with the iPhone, this would instantly create a viable market for developing server applications on Apple's platform. There are a variety of third party server opportunities that would sell Mac OS X Server along with Xserve hardware, but which Apple is unlikely to ever address on its own:

Phone PBX: Office telephony systems are notoriously expensive, but open source projects like Asterisk make it relatively easy to replace dedicated phone systems with a Unix-based server. With a Mac OS X Server Apps Store, there are plenty of companies that would jump at the opportunity to sell ready to go systems that only required plugging in some phone hardware and downloading a server app with a customized Server Admin pane for configuration. It would be easy to deeply integrate office phones with iChat messaging, Bonjour discovery, unified mailbox messaging, and other features that typically cost ridiculous sums from other sources. That application alone would result in thousands of Xserve sales as companies dumped their old PBX systems to go digital with a cost effective, open, and inexpensive system

Specialized Media Servers: Apple bundles its aging QuickTime Streaming Server with Icecast-style MP3 Internet radio streaming, but third parties could provide a variety of alternatives that offered specialized media server features, including a shrink-wrapped solution for serving up HTTP Live Streaming video feeds to iPhone clients. Again, competing server software developers could offer a download package to configure background services that are easy to setup and use in Server Admin. This again would sell many users on the virtue of buying an Xserve as a ready to go solution to media serving needs, from Internet broadcasting to teleconferencing.

Document and media asset management servers: Apple provides basic AFP, SMB, and NFS file serving. Lots of users have special needs for cataloging specialized documents or media assets. Apple's own Final Cut Server could be sold as a plugin module to Mac OS X Server for central administration. Again, third parties would sell Xserves for Apple as the vehicle for their offerings.

Customer Relationship Management: Companies pay through the nose to set up expensive, complex CRM solutions. With Apple supplying the server hardware and supporting operating system services, CRM vendors could taylor CRM offerings to deeply integrate into companies' existing resources and provide Apple with the CRM services savvy that it lacks.

Search and Web Services: Apple's included Wiki collaboration services are easy to use, but there is lots of unaddressed potential in web services that Mac OS X Server could supply if it provided a third party platform for vendors. Google could adapt its own search technology to match its own expertise with Apple's in hardware. Other wiki providers, other web development tools, and even other blogging and e-procurement software could be wedded to Apple's server operating system, marrying Apple's core competency as a platform vendor with the specialized skills of third party developers.

There are too many other specialized server application opportunities to even mention them all. Currently, the market for server software revolves around custom development, resulting in either very expensive solutions or completely free FOSS based solutions that are out of the reach of anyone who lacks development savvy or the resources to acquire it.

Apple advertises Mac OS X Server as "open source made easy." The next step will be making third party server apps accessible to Apple's core markets, and alternatively, to spread Apple's offerings into markets that currently see little relevance in the brand. To do that, Apple needs a build a market and leverage third party expertise.



Daniel Eran Dilger is the author of "Snow Leopard Server (Developer Reference)," a new book from Wiley available now for pre-order.