For our example we are building a server that requires a license for SQL for each CPU. This means if you build a server powered by 4 cpu's the price is correspondingly higher. In the hosting marketplace databases are typically in the 25MB range and while some of then receive tens of thousands of visitors a day, the transaction requests are fast and short-lived. One machine can easily be expected to operate 100 such  Microsoft SQL databases or more. It is not necessarily cost-effective to use multi-processor servers for these smaller accounts. 

Should the need arise for a stronger server the next step-up will be the 2-way and quad-way servers, also 8-way servers are just now coming to market based on the Opteron.  Many 2-way and 4-way AMD powered servers are already hard at work serving applications; such as Atlanta's weather.com where it has been reported their eServer 325 easily out performing their four-way Xeon server. 

Database sizes for many different purposes are expected to grow and if you have not heard yet, the e-commerce boom did happen. E-banking and e-mail are killer applications and Internet usage figures continue to climb, worldwide. The world is drowning in data; as companies try to scale up transaction processing applications, complexity multiplies, performance degrades and costs skyrocket.

Genealogy, media content servers, e-Commerce - the list is long and continues to grow.  Multi-way servers will become more common even with smaller businesses based on the fact that information is being created at a faster pace and stored for longer periods, or even indefinitely. A 4 or 8-way Opteron with other suitable storage devices could help make it possible for companies with large data needs and small budgets to store tremendous amounts of searchable information. While we are not talking about the 10-terabyte human genome database, even an Opteron with 20GB of onboard memory and the right storage system makes a mouth watering proposition.