Appliances enter the mainstream

For reasons I spelled out almost three years ago, appliances dominate the security software market.  This trend is continuing with new kinds of application-oriented security technologies, such as Tizor's.  Appliance vendor Netezza is racing forward in the data warehousing market, with Datallegro charging along behind.   (Actually -- if you count Teradata, appliances have held large market share in data warehousing since time immemorial.)   New categories of software, such as Actional's web services broker, are offered with appliance options.  I get the distinct impression that email is increasingly headed for appliances, although I'll defer to Richi and the rest of the Ferris gang on that particular subject.  Archiving in general also appears to be headed in the appliance direction, although once again I lack command of the details.

It seems that -- especially with the growth in security and archiving budgets -- that appliances are becoming an ever bigger part of the IT mix.   General purpose computers are hardly passe', and not all appliances use special-purpose hardware anyway, but appliances are clearly becoming more and more prevalent as mainstream IT options.