HP sees blade beating rack

Despite rack servers' lead over blades in terms of market sales, Hewlett-Packard touts the blade as "the future of servers" for the midsize market, says ARNnet.

"Although the rack form is still leading, this will eventually be stagnant and taper down," said Veronica Escalante, HP Philippines blade system product manager.

She noted that blade servers are the "growth engine" of the server market, citing an IDC study which said the growth rate for blades in the next five years will continue to rise, with 235% year-on-year growth in sales as of the second quarter of this year.

Sun is combining storage and servers under one systems group, headed by John Fowler, in an attempt to boost declining storage sales, says SearchStorage.

Longer-term, Sun's stated goal is to push more of Sun's own IP into its products. That would create more offerings like "Thumper", the SunFire X4500 server with direct-attached storage that has been the one bright spot in Sun's storage product line over the last year.

Since buying StorageTek, revenue and market share have continued to shrink. Last quarter, revenue for the data centre group fell 10% compared to the same quarter a year ago.

A study of enterprise buyers' x86 server preference by Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG) has been released, reports Internet News.

The survey shows IBM and HP in a race for the top spot, with Sun and Dell picking up the third and fourth spot respectively in most of the study's results.

GCG's semi-annual Server Vendor Preference Survey polls real world customers, including IT managers, architects and administrators, about their perceptions of vendors, and the servers they offer. It also covers specific issues like power and cooling, floor space concerns, virtualisation and future purchasing plans.