Blade servers slash costs, deliver business value - but are you ready?

Blade servers mean lower power consumption, reduced floor space and rack space requirements, provide forward/backward investment protection, as well as the operational cost reductions that ultimately have a major impact on total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on invested capital.

But not every organisation is ready for this technology, despite the fact that it`s taking the global server market by storm.

So says Marco Vieira, HP product manager at independent IT solutions provider First Technology, who notes that Gartner and IDC predict that blade servers will become mainstream in the next three years. The market for this technology is expected to grow to $3.7 billion by 2006.

"As the name implies, a blade server is a single board multi-processor device that slides into a server chassis and has been designed to provide access to all shared components - unlike traditional servers that are individually boxed items, he explains.

According to Vieira, blades represent the next logical opportunity for server vendors in SA, particularly within the telecommunications, finance and media segment. While blade servers have been designed to deliver dramatically improved levels of automation and address the demand for lower costs and higher levels of business agility, they are not yet for everyone.

"Companies considering adopting blade server technology need to be mid-to enterprise-level organisations with disparate systems spread over multiple servers, that are looking at consolidation," he adds.

Moving to blade servers also requires a mindset change, extensive planning and consolidation for storage and applications. But for those who are ready for it, blades can provide a complete solutions for more flexible, operationally efficient IT infrastructures," he concludes.