The company was launched two years ago, in 1995, with just two Pentium® processor-based servers in its IT arsenal. Today, Yahoo! is one of the premier Web search services, logging an astounding 30 million page views every day and claiming a 38 percent reach into the consumer Internet market.

And they've raced every step of the way on Intel architecture computers.

"We experimented with other architectures at the beginning, but PCs were more cost-effective," says Farzad Nazem, Yahoo!'s Vice President of Technology and Operations. "What other architecture would allow us to launch a company with less than $10,000 worth of computer power? We designed our software to grow linearly as we add servers."

Today, Yahoo! runs its business on 70 Intel® Architecture-based servers, ranging from the original 133 MHz Pentium processor-based systems to state-of-the-art Pentium® Pro processor-based servers. In mid-1996, Yahoo! acquired four 4-way Pentium Pro processor-based servers from Compaq* Computer Corporation for hosting its massive directory database. Today, the company's search engine runs on a single Pentium Pro processor-based server, which is being upgraded to an Intel architecture symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) server. It is also upgrading its front-end search activity to Pentium Pro processor-based machines. "The Intel architecture provides us with an incredibly cost-effective strategy for migrating to higher levels of performance without severely impacting our bottom line," says Nazem.

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