HP Shows It Cares About IBM Blade Servers

IBM and Hewlett-Packard are playing He-Said-She-Said again, this time with some small part of their blade server business. And here I go letting myself get dragged in.

IBM said yesterday it has designed breakthroughs that "push boundaries of blade servers." The amazing breakthroughs that will solve all the world's ills? A bit of software.

That software is the IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager, which supports Ethernet and Fibre Channel technologies from a list of vendors too long to think about in order to provide I/O virtualization. IBM said it helps cut cost and complexity through its open architecture.

Well, even before I had a chance to figure out what IBM actually meant by how it is "dramatically enhancing" its BladeCenter portfolio, along comes a message from HP refuting point-by-point IBM's claims.

Not that HP had any interest in helping editors understand what IBM was saying, mind you. No, the folks at HP merely wanted to show how HP Virtual Connect "clearly out delivers" IBM Open Fabric Manager.

Now, all of a sudden, the IBM news was interesting. Not for the "breakthroughs," but for the drama caused by yet another opportunity for IBM and HP to duke it out in the press for another point or two of market share.

The blade server market is the fastest-growing part of the server market. OK, I'm not counting virtual servers, which are aimed at taking out hardware servers. But even so, blade servers stand to take an ever-larger part of the physical server market going forward, and IBM and HP are duking it out for first and second place.

And here I am, playing right into their hands, writing about the IBM breakthroughs and the HP response. A spectator at the local prize fight.

And enjoying every minute of it.