Monthly Archives: December 2009

Great Dell Blade Server Page – "Dell TechCenter Wiki"

Looking through my previous posts it would appear that I’m against Dell’s blade server.  That’s not the case.  The reality is that it is hard to find good technical info on Dell’s product – that is until recently.  A search on SwagBucks.com led me to a little-known Dell website, called “Dell TechCenter Wiki“. 

The site, located at http://www.delltechcenter.com/, is a Dell sponsored wiki where you can find technical info on servers, storage, and even virtualization.  The wiki also provides recorded demos, white papers and even weekly chats with Dell experts to get your hard-to-answer questions answered.  Last week’s chat offered  an overview of new features available with the Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC) for remote monitoring and access of system component information and status of Dell PowerEdge™ M1000e modular blade enclosures. 

As you can tell, this information can be extremely valueable to an IT professional with Dell blade servers, so I encourage you to check it out and let me know what you think.

immigration reform news
best buy mastercard
monster high wiki
debt to income ratio calculator
microsoft powerpoint templates

Cisco Wants IBM’s Blade Servers??

In an unusual move Tuesday, Cisco CEO, John Chambers, commented that Cisco is still open to a blade server “partnership” with IBM.  “I still firmly believe that it’s in IBM’s best interests to work with us. That door will always be open,” Chambers told the audience at the Cisco’s financial analyst conference yesterday at Cisco’s HQ in San Jose. 

John Chambers and other executives spent much of the day talking with financial analysts about Cisco’s goal to become the preeminent IT and communications vendor because of the growing importance of virtualization, collaboration and video, a move demonstrated by their recent partnership announcement with EMC and VMware.  According to reports, analysts at the event said they think Chambers is sincere about his willingness to work with IBM. The two companies have much in common, such as their enterprise customer base, and Cisco’s products could fit into IBM’s offerings, said Mark Sue of RBC Capital Markets.

So – is this just a move for Cisco to tighten their relationship with IBM in the hopes of growing to an entity that can defeat HP and their BladeSystem sales, or has Cisco decided that the server market is best left to manufacturers who have been selling servers for 20+ years?  What are your thoughts?  Please feel free to leave some comments and let me know.

IDC Q3 2009 Report: Blade Servers are Growing, HP Leads in Shares

IDC reported on Wednesday that blade server sales for Q3 2009 returned to quarterly revenue growth with factory revenues increasing 1.2% year over year.  However there was a 14.0% year-over-year shipment decline.  Overall blade servers accounted for $1.4 billion in Q3 2009 which represented 13.6% of the overall server revenue.  Of the top 5 OEM blade manufacturers, IBM experienced the strongest blade growth gaining 6.0 points of market share.  However, overall market share for Q3 2009 still belongs to HP with 50.7%, with IBM following up with 29.4% and Dell in 3rd place with a lowly 8.9% revenue share.Q3_2009_Blades According to Jed Scaramella, senior research analyst in IDC's Datacenter and Enterprise Server group,  "Customers are leveraging blade technologies to optimize their environments in response to the pressure of the economic downturn and tighter budgets. Blade technologies provide IT organizations the capability to simplify their IT while improving asset utilization, IT flexibility, and energy efficiency.  For the second consecutive quarter, the blade segment increased in revenue on a quarter-to-quarter basis, while simultaneously increasing their average sales value (ASV). This was driven by next generation processors (Intel Nehalem) and a greater amount of memory, which customers are utilizing for more virtualization deployments. IDC sees virtualization and blades are closely associated technologies that drive dynamic IT for the future datacenter."