INDUSTRY

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Blade Server: Market Opportunities, Strategies, and Forecasts, 2005 to 2010 to their offering. Margins are slimmer on blade systems compared to mid-range systems. Manufacturers are attempting to gain market share and sell volume. The anticipation of making profits from supplemental service, such as warranties, consulting, and systems integration is a market factor. Blade servers consolidate and simplify the reduction of tangled cables. The spaghetti mess of 200 cables coming out of a 2-meter rack can be replaced with 3 to 6 cables saving as much as one half of the system cost. Replacing cables is significant for services as it is very easy to disconnect the wrong cable bringing down an entire system. IBM is the market leader with 44% market share and Hewlett Packard has 25% share. This is reversed from two years ago when Hewlett Packard was worldwide blade server market shares with 56% in 2002 in a $158 million market. IBM was number two in the blade sever market with 22% market share participation. Growth drivers are Linux clusters and blades. Server consolidation is driving UNIX low- end substitution. The small and medium business market represents over 50% of the Intel- based market. IBM eServer BladeCenter family has already seen the fastest sales growth in IBM server history. Unlike other servers, BladeCenter systems collapse the complexity of corporate datacenters by integrating servers, networks, storage and applications in one system. Blades run web sites and email systems, and also attack the most demanding computing tasks such as digital animation, genomic calculations and financial trading. This report covers such topics as: -- Blade Server Market shares and Forecasts -- Blade Computing Market Driving Forces -- Next Generation of IT Infrastructure -- Real-Time IT Infrastructure -- IT Department Focus -- Blade Pricing -- Blade Interconnect Technology -- Control over the IT Department -- Open Specification for Blade Servers -- Modular Component-Style Architecture for Servers -- Supercomputing -- Cluster File Systems -- Autonomic Computing Attributes -- Packet Processor Resource Board (PPRB) Companies mentioned: -- Egenera -- F5 Networks -- Fujitsu -- Hewlett Packard (HP) -- Hitachi Ltd -- IBM -- Motorola -- NEC -- RLX Technologies -- SteelEye -- Sun Microsystems -- Tatung Science & Technology -- Topspin -- Dell -- Microsoft -- Siemens -- Intel