Sun Glints Off Blades

Sun, which was the butt of jokes during HP's launch of its ambitious blade server strategy earlier this week, is quietly plotting its return to the enterprise blade market. (See HP Brandishes Blades.) And it looks like competitive pricing and interoperability will be its key weapons against blade leaders IBM and HP.

After withdrawing its B1600 blade family from the market last year, the vender has seen its rivals unveil a slew of blade-related products, partners, and customers, as blades gain momentum amongst users. (See HP Intros Better Blade Mgt, IBM Goes for SMB Blades, Mellanox, Voltaire Power HP, IBM Forms Blade Community, and IBM, Walden Collaborate.)

IBM, for its part, took the wraps off a new 10-Gbit/s switch for its BladeCenter platform earlier this week in a clear attempt to tap into users' next-generation server and storage infrastructures. (See IBM Flashes 10-Gig Switch Blade and Future SANs Stir Debate.)

Mike McNerney, Sun's director of blade marketing, would not reveal too many specifics of the new blade server, although he hinted that Sun will leverage lower prices to claw market share from blade leaders HP and IBM. "The benefits of blades are held back by a number of constraints and one of them is price," he says. "It has to be competitive, not just with blade servers, but with the entire server market."

Many users, adds McNerney, currently get more performance and flexibility out of their rack-mount servers than they would from a blade. "Until we address these issues, this will remain a niche market."Sun originally pulled the plug on its enterprise blade strategy because it was heading in the wrong direction. "We felt that we didn't meet the needs of our customers, so we didn't take them down that path," he says. The B1600 was built for a niche set of users that wanted low power and limited processing features, explained the exec. "The market has moved on."

Despite the blade hype in recent years, not all users have been wowed by the technology. Energy consulting firm NewEnergy Associates, for example, opted to replace a slew of Dell blades with conventional servers, citing major savings in heat, power, and staffing costs. (See NewEnergy Chops Its Blades.)

Other users have also voiced their discontent with blade technology, with many firms perceiving the technology as both costly and immature. (See Study Highlights Blade Disappointment and Are Blades Cutting It?.)

McNerney further hinted that Sun's new blade technology could be a step towards greater interoperability. "There's not an industry I/O standard for blades, but there is in rack mounts," he says, adding that Sun sees an opportunity for standardizing blade I/O technology.

Specifically, according to McNerney, Sun is looking to build an extension to the PCI Express I/O standard into its blade servers. This extension is already used in NEC servers, which suggests that Sun is starting to think about the broader context of blade technology, where users are currently hampered by vendors' reliance on proprietary technologies.At the moment, users still can't swap out blades from different vendors within the same chassis, thanks to vendors' reliance on their own blade architectures. (See A Blade That Cuts Both Ways.)

Sun could also be targeting I/O standardization as a way to make good on new CEO Jonathan Schwartz's recent promises to tie the vendor's server and storage businesses more closely together. (See Schwartz Shakes Up Sun and Sun Issues Growth Plan. Since acquiring StorageTek in a $4.1 billion deal last year, Sun has faced repeated demands from customers for a clear roadmap on how it plans to integrate servers and storage. (See Sun Takes Action Amidst Concerns and StorageTek Users Voice Support Fears.)

Reports have already suggested that Sun's re-entry to the blade market will be an eight-way machine based on AMD's Opteron chips.

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

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