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HP is looking to change this dynamic with the launch of its new HP BladeSystem c3000, a complete blade server and storage solution designed from the ground up with the needs of the midmarket in mind. With 8 bays, the HP c3000 enclosure is half the size of its larger sibling, the HP c7000, which has 16 bays, reducing the required up-front investment for midmarket-scale deployments. In addition, with the launch of a new line of storage blades, HP is making all critical IT infrastructure components available within the HP c3000 enclosure, greatly enhancing the value to the midmarket customer. Finally, with a power supply that can be plugged into a standard wall outlet or an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), and the fact it is designed to be operated without the need for any special cooling requirements, the HP c3000 is designed for the type of server rooms commonly found among midmarket customers.
Recent years have witnessed a dramatic turning point for blade technology, with enterprise data centers increasingly adopting them for mainstream deployments.
Bringing advantages in price-performance, power and cooling, reduced floor space footprint, and management and control over rack-mounted servers, blades are proving themselves to be the form factor of choice for many large-scale server deployments. Because of the greater server density achievable through blades, the primary attention initially on blades was focused on solutions such as server centralization and consolidation. Today, however, IT administrators are recognizing the operational management and cost benefits of blades, particularly for large-scale deployments, and are deploying blades to drive down both capital and operational expenses.
This shift toward blades can be seen in the sales figures. According to IDC’s Quarterly Server Tracker, blades are the fastest-growing server segment and accounted for 9.4% of all server shipments, an increase of 38% from two years ago. U.S. blade server revenue reached $2.9 billion in 2006 and is projected to grow to $11.8 billion in 2011, at which time IDC expects blades to account for 26.4% of all server shipments (see Figure 1).
Midmarket companies more often than not compete against larger enterprises to attract and retain an increasingly demanding set of customers. Midsize firms often have computing and storage infrastructure needs similar to those of their larger brethren, with typical requirements spanning reliability, scalability, manageability, and affordability. But even though midmarket customers are increasingly interested in the kinds of advanced technology solutions available to enterprises, they are constrained in a variety of ways that have until recently limited their adoption of blade systembased solutions. Some of these constraints include the following:
! Limited financial resources. While midmarket businesses may spend as much as 510% of their annual revenues on information technology, for a firm with $1 million in annual revenue, this may equate to only $50,000. This relative level of spending may be adequate for a firm with 100 times as much revenue, but for smaller firms, it means setting IT priorities and adhering strictly to a relatively austere budget.
! Need for backward compatibility. In large part because of their limited financial resources, midmarket firms are very reluctant to render past technology investments obsolete. They are always interested in maintaining the value of previous purchases by seeking new hardware and new software that can work with their existing environments. This can make the implementation of new technology solutions difficult if it is associated with major hardware upgrades in advance of scheduled replacements.
! Limited internal IT expertise. IDC research shows that fewer than half of all firms with 50 or fewer employees have any full-time IT personnel and that only at 100 or more employees do most businesses typically employ an IT staff consisting of more than one individual. As a result, for most midmarket companies, IT staff attention is largely focused on supporting the IT user base rather than strategic planning, testing, acquisition, and implementation of new solutions. Even in larger midmarket businesses with full-time IT departments, each staffer supports an average of 3040 end users, a support burden that can largely consume an IT organization and leave little time for special projects or major technology acquisitions.
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