Gateway planning to release first four-way server

Gateway Inc. is planning to release its first four-way server on Monday as the company attempts to win over more business customers as part of a new growth strategy, it said Friday.

The Gateway 995 marks the Poway, California, company’s first foray into servers beyond the simple one-way and two-way machines used for applications like Web hosting. In hopes of turning a profit, Gateway is trying to boost its sales to business customers with higher-margin products like servers and storage while simultaneously attempting to become a consumer electronics vendor of plasma televisions and home theater equipment.

The company first revealed its plans to ship a four-way server in June at Cebit America. In addition, Gateway will add two direct-attached storage products later this year, executives said in June.

The Gateway 995 will be available with up to four Xeon MP processors from Intel Corp. The base configuration costs $5,999 with a single 2.0GHz Xeon MP processor, 512M bytes of DDR (double data rate) memory, a dual-channel Ultra SCSI (small computer systems interface) controller, and a 36G-byte hard disk.

Gateway will also announce Monday that it has agreed to a deal with IBM Global Services to provide support for Gateway’s server customers. The deal will help Gateway offer services within a four-hour window across the U.S., a company spokeswoman said.