Betting On Blades

The way things stand right now, once you've chosen a particular blade server chassis, you've pretty much locked yourself into a given hardware platform. That's because right now, blades from Hewlett-Packard and IBM won't fit into the other vendor's blade chassis. I'm sure that's by design. It's also why I think IBM's plan to work with distributor Avnet Partner Solutions to, in effect, seed the market with free BladeCenter chassis is just short of brilliant.

Yes, you could argue that IBM's enterprise channel will miss out on product margins that might otherwise have materialized. And there is much more involved in generating demand for a blade solution than simply reducing the price of the hardware. On the other hand, IBM's program with Avnet—and, by association, partners working with that distributor—just may provide the impetus for reluctant midmarket accounts to make that initial investment. Besides, the program is likely to be limited in scope and duration.

In my opinion, however, IBM's move to publish design specifications for its BladeCenter last fall will have an even more powerful long-term impact. That's because the move could inspire the development of an ecosystem of compatible switches, daughter cards and other server appliances that fit in the BladeCenter chassis. IBM also has teamed with Intel to create OEM editions for specific solution configurations.

By appealing to this community of complementary vendors, IBM is, in turn, creating an interesting proposition for the vibrant custom-system builder community, which has become a more dominant influence in the server market over the past year, according to CRN's monthly poll data. Consider, also, that share of custom servers running Unix OS derivatives has been on the rise as well. Put these data points together, and I think the trend speaks to a deeper proliferation of server appliances, especially those focused on security tasks, which often run on some Linux distribution.

It doesn't take much of a leap to see that IBM's move to ally itself with this community is a prescient one, indeed.

What blade bets are you placing? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, appreciates your feedback and comments at [email protected].