TDWI has a great article on Data Warehouse Appliances which includes all-in-all solution for enterprises. Neat Read.
In the BI world, the data warehousing appliance extends this metaphor to the enterprise data center with the vision of a high-performance database system that satisfies business intelligence (decision support) requirements and includes the server hardware, network interconnect, database software, and selected load, workload, scheduling, and administration tools needed for quick installation, loading, and ongoing monitoring.
Enterprise data warehousing appliances are popular because they get the job done in many data scenarios. However, in spite of their significant success, data warehousing appliances are not a one-size-fits all proposition, nor, as any vendor will tell you, are they appropriate for every workload profile or data warehousing challenge. A diversity of appliance vendors have emerged, including appliance offerings from the large, established information technology (IT) stalwarts such as HP, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. Teradata objects to be called an “appliance,” though it also objects to not being named as an IT stalwart that is relevant to the appliance market.
Best-of-breed innovators continue to contribute to market dynamics. Key differentiators — about which, as a prospective buyer of a data warehousing appliance, you should examine –include the number of successful installed customers in production willing to speak about their experiences (both positive and negative); the details of the technology itself (whether the database is open source and how it is customized, whether the server, disk, and networks are a commodity components and how they can be customized; the breadth and maturity of complementary tools such as inquiry and reporting, ETL, data quality solution); and the price of acquisition and cost of operation. Published results from public benchmarks (such as tpc.org) are also useful for starting a conversation about performance and price, though don’t rely exclusively on the benchmark “winner” since results are frequently updated.