Category Archives: Market Analysis

Are Vendors Getting Out of the Blade Server Market?

I recently was asked, am I seeing server vendors exiting the blade server market?  If so, what are they selling in place of blades?  Honestly, I was surprised by the question.  The only whisper of any exits from the blade market were stirred up last year with the rumors of Cisco exiting.  I address that in this post, but I wanted to see if there was any validity into what was being asked, so I dug around.  I was surprised by what I found. Continue reading

Are Multi-Node Systems a Better Option Than Blade Servers?

Lately I’ve been having discussions around “futures” with customers and one topic continues to be over ongoing interest.  What will blade servers look like with the expectations of CPU TDPs continuing to increase?  Looking into the future, it’s very clear that CPUs are going to create an obstacle for blade server users.  TDPs are going to grow to the point where “air cooling” may not be sufficient for all workloads.  This will force blade server users to make a choice.  Continue reading

A Review of Blade Server Market Share

Every quarter IDC publishes market data for blade server vendors.  In the past I’ve only covered the top 4 main stream vendors, Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE and Lenovo.  However, I recently came upon IDC’s full list of blade server vendors so I thought it would be good to share.

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A Closer Look at the Q3 2020 IDC Blade Server Market Data

Earlier this month, IDC published their Q3 2020 WorldWide Server tracker data showing the top server vendors.  in this post, I’m going to dive in and take a closer look at how blade servers are performing including which vendor is leading the blade server market.    Continue reading

What Does the Future Hold for the Blade Server?

One of the goals I have for this blog is to keep it current with news and updates from blade top tier server vendors.  However, over the past year, I have found it harder and harder to find relevant information.   Why is this?  Is it just because we in a lull between new blade server models or is the blade server dying? I decided to dig a little deeper into this question. Continue reading

Storage Options for Blade Servers

As technology trends like software defined storage (SDS) become more adopted in data centers, it will be interesting to see how it will impact the blade server market – especially with current research showing an expectation of growth over the next 5 years.  To succeed, blade server vendors will have to find ways to adopt to changing technology trends- especially SDS.   Continue reading

Gartner Releases New Magic Quadrant for Modular Servers – May 2015

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Gartner Magic Quadrant for blade servers as they discontinued it in 2014.  Last month, Gartner created a new Magic Quadrant to replace the older one.  The newest Magic Quadrant incorporates both blade servers and multi-node servers. According to Gartner, “the separation of the blade and multinode server markets has become harder to maintain as multinode servers adopt the technology characteristics of blade servers. With the evolution of new modular server designs, the concept of traditional server blades will fade in favor of increasingly variable ‘bricks’ or ‘cartridges.’ Consequently, a Magic Quadrant that tracked only the blade server market could only deliver partial value. This new Magic Quadrant is designed to better reflect the evolving market for any servers that display modular characteristics.”  You can view the full article here, but I’ve summarized their findings for the top modular server vendors below.

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Worldwide Server Market Revenues Increase 4.8% in Third Quarter

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., December 3, 2014 – According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 4.8% year over year to $12.7 billion in the third quarter of 2014 (3Q14).

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