Opinion: What's in the box?

With price tags around $2m, although you save a considerable amount over building an equivalent data centre, you still have to be a rather large outfit to need so much grunt.

What would be really nice for SMBs would be a mini-container, about the size that would fit on the back of an average ute.

For reall small SMBs a single server is just fine, but once you get big enough to need two or three servers the place starts to get messy and tangled unless you rack the stuff up, but then not every office has an obvious place to park a rack -- along with the noise it makes.

But a container with all the required bits inside, room for maybe four to six servers and storage, with UPS and network switches, could surely fit into a shrunk container configuration.

Then you could park the bugger under the stairwell or in the corridor alongside the dunny, OH&S not withstanding.

Since the concept requires only a fat power lead and a network cable to get things humming, this would surely appeal to almost any small business owner.

And when, not if, the thing develops a fault, you just ring your friendly reseller, who drives up in the IT ute, swaps it for another one, presses the virtual restore button and you're back on the air before your staff can ask for the rest of the day off work.

Of course, you can do this now if you run everything over your network connection to some rented space on a datacentre but once again SMBs can't afford the kind of network link that makes this practical.

Until we really do have fibre optic cables everywhere, SMBs need their server in the office or at least just outside the window next to the air-con pump.

There's gotta be somebody out there who can knock up an SMB-sized Blackbox. There's an awful lot more SMBs than there are companies which can afford a genuine $2m container-sized Blackbox.