Vendors push for common Blade server standards

Despite denials in the past year from leading vendors, discussions on a common format for blade servers have been proceeding for between 12 and 18 months, according to Fujitsu Siemens’ European Marketing manager Bernhard Brandwitte.

Although he was unable to elaborate on who FSC were in discussions with, he did confer that attempts to convince market leaders HP or IBM to make a statement came to nothing.

Key to a vendor’s arsenal, proprietary blade chassis are sold at relatively low prices with profit being reclaimed from servers and other appliances that an enterprise requires to slot in the chassis, a business model that has been adopted from printer manufacturers.

Any collaboration between influential market leaders HP and IBM would, in all probability, appear unlikely for fear of losing their kingpin status.

When recently asked, HP maintained that combining diverse blades in a common chassis would lead to confusion, allegation and blame.

Conversely Sun, Dell and FSC who have less lose, wish to increase their expansion into this rapidly developing and productive market and would more likely welcome a common format that would provide them with a distinction.

Sun, existing technical collaborators with FSC, would be the most probable candidate for conformity.

Category: Servers