The Blade Edge

The Blade Edge

Not just hi-tech lab material anymore, blade servers are gaining
acceptance everyday

The buzz word in computing hardware is 'small form factor'.
Whether it is desktops, portables or servers, the size of the machines are
constantly shrinking. As a result today we see small footprint desktops, ultra
portables, and thin and light servers that defy size and churn out huge
computing power. Welcome to the world of Blade Servers that was once considered
just a 'hi-tech lab material', and is now gaining market acceptance by the
day.

The escalation of blades in the server space has been quite
impressive. Even though they represent a small proportion of the server pie
right now, their application scenarios in compute intensive environments across
the world are growing. What is driving blades are the distinct benefits they
bring to table. For instance, blades bring in high degree of server
manageability, virtualization, simplified network and storage management. Also,
blades consume less power, which translates into huge cost savings for
enterprises. But despite all the benefits, blades are yet to create a big impact
in the mainstream server space. Blade server applications are largely limited to
data centers and high performance computing.

The Market Evolution

Blades are seen as a boon in bringing down server footprint that in turn
will simplify server management. Blades provide more functionality, greater
density as compared to conventional servers. Clearly blades bring in a highly
scaleable, agile computing infrastructure that can be configured as per load
patterns. As computing options continue to grow in the industry standard
computing market, the emphasis is more on scale up vs scale out. Viswanath
Ramaswamy, country manager, System x, IBM India says, "When we talk about
scale up, we talk about the need for additional processors, memory and I/O
thereby increasing a system's computing power. Availability and reliability
are built into the more advanced technology. Scale out, on the other hand, means
the addition of multiple low-end systems in a clustered configuration for
greater performance, availability and reliability of the final solution."
This clearly drives home the point that blade servers are an ideal platform for
the physical consolidation of multiple heterogeneous servers.

The rapid adoption of blades is changing the personality of
servers-offering double the density as compared to 1U rack servers. In the
past the amount of heat generated per unit volume was an issue, but vendors
coming out with effective cooling mechanisms have addressed that. (Calibrated
vectored cooling is a scientific way to keep the temperature of the blades in a
range that facilitates peak processor performance.)

"Enterprises with tower servers go for blades when they expand for having more working space, and for consolidated management as well" -Sashi Kanth, general Manager, India Business, Fujitsu
		"Blades have evolved primarily due to growing complexity and maturity of businesses in India. Infrastructure needs resulting in increased demand for reducing long term TCO." -Suresh Kumar, head, personal computing products, Wipro

Blade servers are a natural evolution of server form-factor and
functionality. Says Krithiwas Neelakantan, general manager, systems practice,
Sun Microsystems India, "The first generation of blade servers focused
largely on physical attributes such as server density, that were largely
deployed for edge-tier workloads like web serving, file-and-print services. The
second generation of blade servers brought in improvements in computing
capability and RAS features that have given confidence to customers to deploy
them in mid-tier workloads like collaboration and messaging, application
servers." The second generation blade market has all the trappings of a
trend in the making, because most vendors expect the market to open up in a big
way.

The blade server market used to be a three horse race: with IBM,
HP and Dell battling it out. But a look at the market composition right now
reveals the active presence of other vendors like Wipro, Fujitsu and Sun
Microsystems offering a slew of blade products. The multiple vendors just
reflect the expanding market for blades. A recent Gartner report suggests that
blade server shipments in the Asia-Pacific region will increase at a compound
annual growth rate of 27.4% over the next five years, to reach 168,200 units and
a revenue of $494.3 mn by 2011.

The Indian Scenario

With defined benefits from blades, how is the market panning out in India?
Going by the findings of market researcher IDC India, the blade server market
has witnessed huge growth y-o-y. For instance, in 2003 the market for blades in
India was just about 524 units. During 2004, blades grew by 100% with units
summing to 1,055. In 2005, blades grew in excess of 248% with 3,679 units. For
2006, IDC has projected a market size for blades at 7,000 by the end of this
year. Looking at the growth patterns, blades are clearly ramping up very fast
and volumes increasing. Says Sanjit Sinha, general manager, research, IDC India,
"Blades are poised for good growth with segments like R&D and high
performance computing driving the market. The key advantages of blade servers
are their small and thin form and greater functionality. Our outlook on the
blade market in India is bullish."

Says Krithiwas Neelakantan, "There is cautious optimism
among Indian enterprises in adopting blade servers. Most domestic customers have
consolidated edge-tier and lower- level workloads on blade servers. Just as rack
servers gradually supplanted tower servers, we expect blade servers to supersede
rack servers over the next three to four years."

In India companies like IBM have large mandates in this space.
Says Viswanath Ramaswamy of IBM, "We are the leaders in the blade market in
India. From Q4 2003 till Q2 2006, a total of 7,845 blades have been sold in the
Indian x 86 markets, out of which IBM has got the largest share of 5,211
blades." IBM has to be given credit for developing the blade market in
India to what it is today. The company has also built a world-class solution
center in Bangalore which has the capability to test and benchmark applications,
and interested enterprises can get themselves trained on Blade Center
technologies. "It has been received very well by customers who have visited
the center. We would be looking at much larger participation from our business
partners to take this platform to the customers says Ramaswamy.

Right now, in an Indian context, the adoption of the blades is
more in the data center environment. According to Suresh Kumar, head, personal
computing products, Wipro, "Adoption of blade servers by large data centers
is faster when compared to other enterprises which have a distributed
architecture. The reason for this is two fold: One, because for any data center
every rack space is a key resource. The other is that a blade server solution
consumes lesser power and thus has lesser cooling load as the cooling and
powering resources are consolidated at the chassis level."

Industry experts also feel that India is a cost conscious market
and in order to boost blade server sales, system integrators and other
technology owners have to look at ways to bring down the initial capital
required. This way the entry barrier is removed and it becomes a much more
attractive proposition for end customers.

Once Indian enterprises are open to adoption of more advanced
server technologies, it will be easier to educate them on blade servers and
assure them of the inherent qualities and reliability. Reflecting on this Sashi
Kanth, general manager, India Business, Fujitsu says, "Indian organizations
may stereotype blade servers as the weaker link when compared to big and bulky
rack servers which they have used and relied upon for a long time. It takes time
to change mindsets as Indian enterprises learn to adapt to newer and more
advanced technologies. Product specialists will have an important role to play
in imparting knowledge in order to create acceptance and confidence in blade
servers."

"Standardization of I/O and certain other components in blade servers can significantly drive costs down, providing an additional reason for customers to go for them." -Krithiwas Neelakantan, general manager, systems practice, Sun Microsystems India		"Blade servers are slated to contribute at least 15-18% of the x 86 server markets by 2008" -Viswanath Ramaswamy, country manager, System x, IBM India

Computing needs grow as companies expand. When compute resources
such as servers and storage are exhausted, IT managers have to upgrade or
acquire new systems. Exorbitant cost of data center space and utilities force
them to look at high density solutions like blades. With blade servers, space
would no more be an issue, not to mention a host of other benefits such as ease
of maintenance and support.

Blade servers can be used as the standard building block for an
IT backbone. All leading vendors today recommend blade servers not only to MNCs
but also to the SME market in India. Blades on an SME environment have a whole
lot of implications as they can arrive at bigger computing power.

Today, justifying the cost of blade servers is less of a
challenge for IT managers compared to the early days when blade servers were
first introduced and were much more costly. The ease of installation and
maintenance makes administration and support much easier. From the application
standpoint, blades provide flexibility and are ideal for virtualization. Each
virtual server can run its own applications.

What emerges at the end of the day is that blades are
increasingly becoming popular, with successful deployments in data center
environments acting as a key driver for growth. With enterprises striving for
simplified server management, they are seriously looking at server consolidation
and workin out strategies for arriving at the best possible server
configuration. Enterprises having many tower servers are expanding their
computing power through blades. They are consolidating their server hardware and
arriving at peak functionality by going the blade way. As industry vendors say:
"Blades are poised for a spectacular future."

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in