'Regardless of how blade servers are used, the market is booming'

Adoption of blade servers is increasing quite fast. These servers are strong
on power efficiency, space saving and very easy to manage and maintain. Blade
server technology can accommodate 280 servers in a single industry standard
rack. Alongside, one could also have dual and Quad CPU Xeon servers in a blades
form factor. Server blade cards fitting into server enclosures is a path
breaking technology. Will this technology make it big in the server space? Yes,
says Rajesh Dhar country manager-Industry Standard Server Busines, HP India in
an interview to Dataquest. Excerpts

How do you characterize the Blade server market globally?

According to IDC, the global blade server market is $583 mn as compared to
the overall $44.3 bn server market. But it is growing fast- it saw a 54% rise in
sales last year as compared to 2002, when the major sellers had launched blades.

In an Indian context what is the market maturity for blade servers and
which are the enterprise segments that are currently going for blades?

Blade servers are largely identical to currently used rack servers. So, their
market adoption scenarios are also the same as currently used rack servers. We
have seen that some of the earliest adopters have been the high-performance
computing segment that needs configurations like clusters of Linux servers. This
segment is looking for processing power and density at a low price. However,
corporations also are also interested, as they seek to break out applications
onto distributed servers.

What is HP's Blade server strategy and offerings in India?

Compared to traditional x86, rack-mount or proprietary platforms, our Blade
System dramatically lowers cost, increases utilization and efficiency. So our
strategy is to educate customers on the savings that Blade System can bring
about for the enterprise and how it can lower their cost of ownership of the
infrastructure. Our offerings in the space include compute, storage, power, and
network resources integrated into an advanced management framework improving
collaboration and processes.

What is the value proposition an enterprise derives by this option?

Blade server's strength is in the elements they share, which include the
back plane, fans, and management. This saves valuable floor space, reduces the
amount of cabling, and provides great management flexibility. It also enables
great scaling. For instance blades can be simply scaled by adding cards to the
existing chassis. Price and density is the key, but the cost of deployment and
management, especially in terms of IT personnel hours is also a differentiator.

What is the response from the Indian enterprise CIO's on the Blade
servers?

There is a mixed reaction from CIOs. Some of them are absolutely impressed
by the technology and are adopting it enthusiastically. Blade System very
efficiently addresses their need for managing cost of ownership, mitigating
risks, increasing performance, and increasing agility. Others are slightly
guarded because it is a new technology, which in some cases requires a paradigm
shift in how the infrastructure is perceived as a whole rather than only as
technology. Blade servers are being adopted by enterprises that realize the
savings from Blade System in terms of costs across all dimensions of ownership.
It is actually growing or is at the same rate as the market maturity level-and
in today's scenario, it is at a rapid rate.

Shrikanth G in
Chennai