By Paul Kunert
1 August 2008
Gartner has warned a lack of standards and rapid changes to the technology are holding back blade server adoption, even though the platform remains the fastest growing segment of the market.
The worldwide blade market is projected by Gartner to grow 19 per cent CAGR which means the segment will account for 20 per cent of the total server market, up from 10 per cent of shipments last year.
But several factors are limiting market growth said the analyst, “Blade servers have a number of proprietary aspects, and the market lacks interoperability standards that lock users into the technology,” said John Enck, Gartner managing vice president.
Though not advising customers to steer clear of blades, Andrew Butler, vice president at Gartner said IT departments adopting blades needed to be mindful that the technology was perpetually evolving.
“Blades servers have been a rapidly changing technology, and we fully expect this to continue, particularly during the next five years,” he said.
Customers were cautious of lock-in but the benefits of deploying blades outweighed those concerns said Rob Campbell, managing director at HP reseller Kavanagh, “I see no reason why the market will not continue to grow rapidly.”
“Blades are scalable and with virtualisation and other general management tools can be relatively easy to integrate into a business, “he said.
