This article focuses on blades and their future as servers. It also looks at the lack of standards, meaning that different vendors' blades are still incompatible. And it contains big numbers.
Blades may not have become the biggest sector of the server market - contrary to some of the more bullish forecasts made last year - but these compact server-on-a-card machines are nevertheless likely to be one of the more active areas of the business over the coming years.
It's not hard to see why. Blades allow cost-conscious corporates to expand the processing capacity of their data centres more efficiently and more cheaply than adding further standard rack-mount units.
Of course, the overall decline in server sales over the past two years has hindered the growth of blade sales - hitting blade pioneers like RLX Technologies hard - but if the latest predictions aren't as enthusiastic as they were early last year, they still anticipate significant growth.
So while market researcher IDC proclaimed in 2001 that some two million blades would be sold in 2005, all together worth $102 billion, it now puts the figure at a more modest $3.7 billion for 2006. Then, it believes, blades will account for around 20 per cent of all servers sold. Gartner Dataquest reckons a million blades will be sold in 2006, up from 85,000-odd this year.
I'm still puzzled by forecasters. Moving back from a prediction of $102 billion in 2002 to $3.7 billion in 2006 is ridiculous. Who can believe these numbers? Is the first one credible (was it ever?)? Is the second one better? How can individual observers or investors trust such market analysis? Amazing!!
Source: Tony Smith, The Register, June 26, 2002
6:02:51 PM Permalink
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