Blades to trim server complexity

Typical of these are the XML accelerators from Conformative; the database query accelerator from Netezza; the transaction processor from Celoxica; and Java accelerators from Azul Networks.

The FineGround deal shows network systems providers such as Cisco are currently looking to buy such technology and expand their involvement in datacentre systems.

However, Daniel Fleischer of research firm IDC, said, “Application-specific servers may sell well to small and medium-sized firms, but I don’t see them selling to the large enterprise where simplifying IT is the goal. Application-specific servers would only serve to increase the complexity and cost.”

Joyce Becknell of analyst Sageza agreed. “Moves to specialised servers make me worried. They can easily become the bottleneck in an enterprise infrastructure,” she said.

Becknell said a lot of firms will soon have to upgrade kit as the systems bought to deal with the Millennium Bug come to the end of their useful life. Andy Efstathiou of analyst Yankee Group agreed and predicted sales of hardware will soon pick up, particularly for blades. “HP and IBM are the leaders [in blade servers], and with a trend towards more standardisation I expect to see just the two architectures over the next two years,” he added.

Fleischer said about 70 percent of the cost of servers is accounted for by management overheads, so many firms will be tempted by blades to reduce this expense.

Standardised blade servers coupled with virtualisation technologies could also be used to deploy application-specific systems. “IBM is already doing this with the BladeCenter architecture, mixing x86 and Power-based servers together with the networking and communications,” Fleischer said.

Becknell added, “You can fit just about anything except a mainframe into the blade architecture. That is the point about blades. If

a service becomes a bottleneck, blades allow additional servers to be quic kly and efficiently added.”

Andy Butler of analyst Gartner predicted this trend will start slowly and become the standard approach by 2010 to 2015. He added that HP and IBM blades are already incorporating Nortel and Brocade hardware to provide more flexibility.

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