Hot off the presses is the latest IDC worldwide server market revenue report for Q3 2011. The gist of the report is that while some of the numbers are slightly adjusted, really not much has changed in the blade server market.

Revenue growth for the entire server market (all servers, not just blade servers) slowed considerably showing only 4.2% year over year growth bringing in $12.7 billion. Growth in the world of servers continues but this marks the slowest growth rate for any quarter since Q1 2010. IDC believes that overall server sales will continue to decelerate due to weakening economic conditions around the globe. “After nearly two years of steady revenue growth, the server market began to decelerate in Q3 2011 as demand stabilized for many system categories,” said Matt Eastwood, group VP and general manager. Incidentally, IBM and HP are both holding steady, tied for the #1 spot in revenue share, at 29.8%.

When looking at the blade server market specifically, growth was steady for Q3 2011 but not as explosive as Q2 2011. IDC reports “solid growth” in the quarter with a revenue increase of 16.4% year over year (vs 26.9% growth in 2Q11). Shipments increased 2.4% (vs 6.2% reported growth for 2Q11). One thing that hasn’t changed since last quarter is that 89% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems. Also, blade server sales representing  20.8% of all x86 server revenue. This shows continued steady growth for the blade server segment but that the pace may be slowing slightly.

#1 market share: HP managed to hold the majority margin moving to 51.0% in Q3 2011 from 51.9% in Q2 2011.

#2 market share: IBM continues to see its margin chipped away slightly down to 18.5% in Q3 2011 from 19.1% in Q2 2011.

#3 market share: Cisco’s disruptive market penetration seems to have slowed at 10.7% overall compared to a solid 10% in Q2 2011.

#4 market share: Even Dell dropped slightly to 7.2% revenue share from 8.2% last quarter.

In looking at the totals, the top four vendors represented 87.4% of the revenue share in the blade servers market which is actually down 2% from last quarter. Cisco grew revenue share by less than 1% which means that some of the displacement of the remaining top vendors is not accounted for. Does this mean there may be some new players in the “others” category that we should be watching? Without a detailed breakdown it’s hard to tell but I’ll definitely be looking forward to comparing the numbers next quarter to see if the trend continues. It could, after all, just be a factor of the margin of error in the statistics.

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC, “Blade systems represented the fastest growing segment in the server industry and now account for 16.0% of total server revenue – a historic high.”

Probably the most interesting aspect of the report is the introduction of hyper-scale servers. “Hyper-scale servers are designed for large scale datacenters with streamlined system designs that focus on performance, energy efficiency, and density.” This sounds like the mantra for blade servers with the main difference being the lack of management and high availability capabilities at the hardware level. Basically these represent the miles of simple, rack mount commodity servers used by the likes of Google and Facebook. This is a $428 million dollar server segment and growing.

For the full IDC report covering the Q2 2011 Worldwide Server Market, please visit IDC’s website at http://www.idc.com.

If you are a reader of BladesMadeSimple, you are no stranger to Dell’s Network Daughter Card (NDC), but if it is a new term for you, let me give you the basics. Up until now, blade servers came with network interface cards (NICs) pre-installed as part of the motherboard.  Most servers came standard with Dual-port 1Gb Ethernet NICs on the motherboard, so if you invested into a 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) or other converged technologies, the onboard NICs were stuck at 1Gb Ethernet.  As technology advanced and 10Gb Ethernet became more prevalent in the data center, blade servers entered the market with 10GbE standard on the motherboard.  If, however, you weren’t implementing 10GbE then you found yourself paying for technology that you couldn’t use.  Basically, what ever came standard on the motherboard is what you were stuck with – until now.

 Dell has broken the long-standing design concept of embedding the LAN onto the motherboard (aka LOM) and replaced it with a small, removable mezzanine card called a Network Daughter Card, or NDC.  The NDC provides the buyer with a flexibility of choosing what they want ( 4 x 1GbE, 2 x 10GbE or 2 x Converged Network Adapter.)  This innovation is exciting to me, as it not only provides a possible upgrade path to future technologies, but it also changes the way we look at server technology.  No longer does the on-board NIC have to be integrated onto the motherboard, but it can be a removable card that can be easily replaced or upgraded.  In a few years when this is standard architecture on every x86 server, remember where you saw it first.

But wait – there’s more.  In addition the NDC is the first adapter to offer the industry’s first network partitioning, or “NPAR” scheme that makes it possible to split the 10GbE pipe while working with any of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e 10GbE Ethernet Switch Modules.  So, what’s the big deal about NPAR?  Let me explain.

With the increased amount of virtualization in the data center, combined with an increase in data and cloud computing, the network’s efficiency is becoming compromised driving many organizations to embrace a 10GbE network.  While moving to a more robust 10GbE environment may be ideal for an organization, it also brings challenges like ensuring that the appropriate bandwidth for all resources is available in both the physical and virtual environments.  This is where NPAR comes in.  Network Partitioning allows for administrators to split up  the 10GbE pipes on the NDC into 4 separate partitions or physical functions and allocate bandwidth and resources as needed.  Each of the four partitions is an actual PCI Express function that appears in the blade server’s system ROM, O/S or virtual O/S as a separate physical NIC. 

Each partition can support networking features such as:

• TCP checksum offload
• Large send offload
• Transparent Packet Aggregation (TPA)
• Multiqueue receive-side scaling
• VM queue (VMQ) feature of the Microsoft® Hyper-V™ hypervisor
• Internet SCSI (iSCSI) HBA
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) HBA.

Administrators can enable/disable any of the features per partition and they configure a partition to run iSCSI, FCoE, and TCP/ IP Offload Engine (TOE) simultaneously.

Each of the four partitions per port (8 per NDC) can be set up with a specific size and a specific weight.  In the example shown on the above, you see that Physical Port 1 has 4 partitions:

• Partition 1 (red) = 2Gbps, running as an iSCSI HBA on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Partition 2 (orange) = 2Gbps, running as an FCoE HBA on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Partition 3 (green) = 1Gbps, running TOE on on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Partition 4 (blue) = 5Gbps, running as a Layer 2 NIC on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

Each partition’s “Maximum Bandwidth” can be set to any increment of 100Mbps (or .1Gbps) up to 10000 Mbps or 10 Gbps.  Also, note, this is for send/transmit only.  The receive direction bandwidth is always 10 Gbps.

Furthermore, admins can configure the weighting of each partition to provide increased bandwidth presence when an application requires it.  In the example above, Physical Port 2 has the “Relative Bandwidth Weight” on all 4 partitions set for an equal weight at 25% – giving each port equal weight.  If, however VMkernel NIC 1 (red) needed to have more weight, or priority, over the other NICs, we could set the weight to 100% giving that port top priority.

If you are feeling really adventurous, you can oversubscribe a port.  This is accomplished by setting the 4 partitions of that single port to having a Maximum Bandwidth setting of more than 100%.  This allows each of the partitions to take as much bandwidth as allowed as their individual traffic flow needs change – based on the Relative Bandwidth Weight assigned.  Take a look at the following:

The example above shows each of the four partitions’ Maximum Bandwidth (shown in .1 increments so 10 = 1 Gbps)

• Partition 1 = 1 Gbps
• Partition 2 = 1 Gbps
• Partition 3 = 8 Gbps
• Partition 4 = 8 Gpbs

Total for all 4 partitions = 18 Gbps, which means the port is 80% (8 Gbps) oversubscribed.

Some additional rules to note from the NPAR User’s Manual:

• For Microsoft Windows Server, you can have the Ethernet Protocol enabled on all, some, or none of the four partitions on an individual port.
• For Linux OSs, the Ethernet protocol will always be enabled (even if disabled in Dell Unified Server Configuration screen).
• A maximum of two iSCSI Offload Protocols (HBA) can be enabled over any of the four available partitions of a single port. For simplicity, it is recommended to always using the first two partitions of a port for any offload protocols.
• For Microsoft Windows Server , the Ethernet protocol does not have to be enabled for the iSCSI offload protocol to be enabled and used on a specific partition.

For more information on the Network Partitioning capabilities of the Dell Network Daughter Card, check out the white paper at: Dell Broadcom NPAR White Paper

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market.

I’ve learned over the years that it is very easy to focus on the feeds and speeds of a server while overlooking features that truly differentiate.  When you take a look under the covers, a server’s CPU and memory are going to be equal to the competition, so the innovation that goes into the server is where the focus should be.  On Dell’s community blog, Rob Bradfield, a Senior Blade Server Product Line Consultant in Dell’s Enterprise Product Group, discusses some of the innovation and reliability that goes into Dell blade servers.  I encourage you to take a look at Rob’s blog post at http://dell.to/mXE7iJ.

I also want to highlight some other innovations that Dell is offering on certain blade servers:

Network Daughter Card (NDC) – unlike the network interface cards built into the blade server motherboard, the NDC is a daughter card that offers choices of 4 x 1Gb NICs, 10Gb NICs or CNA.  The NDC is a new feature and not offered on every blade server, but for more info, check out this earlier blog post I wrote: http://bladesmadesimple.com/2011/05/a-review-of-the-dell-poweredge-m710-hd-blade-server/

Network Interface Card Partitioning  (NPAR) – this is a feature found on certain blade server models that allows you to divide up the onboard 10Gb NICs into “virtual NICs”.  The cool thing is this can be performed without a specific network I/O module so you don’t have to worry about being locked into any specific I/O module and without the use of any CPU overhead or specialized software.   Read more about this at http://bladesmadesimple.com/2011/04/dellapril5announcements/.

Let me put these innovative features into a real life scenario (note – this is simply an example and doesn’t confirm or deny any future product release from Dell.)  Imagine today you invest into a blade server with a 10Gb NDC using NPAR to split up the 10Gb pipe into smaller 1Gb virtual NICs. and 10Gb capable Ethernet I/O Module and in 18 months, a 40Gb Ethernet Switch module comes out.  You could theoretically replace the NDC and the Ethernet module with the 40Gb flavor (if/when it ever is available)

The next time you choose a server, look beyond the speeds and feeds and look at the innovation, the reliability and the value the server can offer.

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market.

I always find it interesting to hear how customers are using blade server technology “in the real world.”   Brickworks, a $1.7 billion Australian brick company with over 60 locations and 1,000 employees, recently provided The Australian with details about how Citrix XenApp Enterprise combined with VMware vSphere and Dell rack and blade servers helped develop a more efficient workplace for its employees.  Read the full article at:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/brickworks-builds-solid-system-using-citrix/story-e6frgakx-1226129943367

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market. 

#IWorkForDell

In case you haven’t heard, “cloud” discussions are here to stay and everyone has their own recommendations for you to start building your cloud environment, but which is best for you?  Intel has created the “Intel® Cloud Builders” program aimed at making it easier for you to build, enhance and operate cloud infrastructure.

The Intel® Cloud Builders site is a collection of Cloud Design architectures resources from all of the major vendors like Cisco, EMC, Dell, HP and IBM.  Once you understand your cloud requirements then you can filter through the architectures based on one or more of the following:

1) Usage Models

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Policy-Based Power Management
• Scale-out Storage
• Trusted Compute Pools
• Unified Networking
• Client-Aware (self-service)

2) Cloud Computing Categories

• Build and Simply Your (existing) Cloud
• Improve Efficiency
• Enhance Security

3) Preferred Ecosystem Partner (allows you to pick your preferred hardware or software vendor)

While the site provides useful information, it is still limited.  For example a search in “all Dell” within the Content Library returns 3 documents; “all Cisco” returns 1 document and “all HP” returns 2 documents.  I see really good potential for this site, but Intel and their Ecosystem Partners are going to need to provide more documentation.  I would also like to see Intel introduce a filtering category that allows you to choose between rack servers and blade servers. 

Overall, I would give the site a 3 out of 5, so if you are looking for a resource to help you with your cloud design, check out Intel® Cloud Builders at http://www.intelcloudbuilders.com/

I was recently on one of those calls from HP “checking in”. If you are an HP customer you may know these calls start off with something like “We know you spent money on HP last quarter so how many people from this company will have to pester you until you buy more stuff from us?” One of the things the HP rep mentioned towards the end the process, however, is that until October HP is now offering a free blade enclosure with the purchase of four HP BL460′s.  I have to admit, I haven’t talked to anyone about the gritty details yet but this sounds awfully familiar to the promotion that IBM is having that was reported here earlier this month. I did some research online and found a few links with various versions (or at least descriptions) of this offer including one for UK customers that is about to expire:

Link 1
Link 2

Incidentally, I did some poking around directly on the HP site and found no advertisements or even mention of the “free chassi” promotional offer.   It seems to be a weak promotion if there’s nothing to indicate that it even exists. Regardless, does this mean that Dell is next? Does this mean that Cisco UCS is more disruptive than the HP, IBM or Dell are letting on or is it simply a case of corporate “me too”? Seems like a silly bandwagon to jump on given that most of the cost is not in the chassis, but in the I/O modules. Give away a free enclosure with a pair of Flex-10 modules installed and then you’ll have my undivided attention, Mr. HP. Kudos.

Chris is a contributor and author for BladesMadeSimple.com and in his day job is a Systems Architect for Clackamas County in Oregon and an HP customer.  The opinions expressed in his writings do not ncessarily reflect those of BladesMadeSimple or Chris’ employer.  Follow Chris on Twitter @sysgeekguy.

Many people get confused as to why so many I/O modules are needed within a given blade chassis.  The basic concept is simple (in most cases) – for each port you need on a given blade server, you need to have a corresponding I/O module.  For example, if you need 4 NICs, you’re going to need 4 Ethernet modules (in most cases.)  In today’s post, I thought I would keep it simple and publish the I/O diagrams of Cisco, Dell, HP and IBM chassis.  Of course, I am human and “have been known to make mistakes – from time to time” so please feel free to correct me on any errors you see.  Enjoy.

(Updated 8/3/2011 – fixed Dell M1000e Full Height I/O Diagram)

Personal Cassette Players.  Portable CD players.  Dial up Internet. Betamax.  The VCR.  Pagers.  These are all popular technologies that have gone away.  When they were hot, you would never have expected for them to one day be extinct.  Are blade servers set to follow in the footsteps of these other blade technologies?

Mid year of 2009, HP introduced their “scalable” line of servers with the HP ProLiant SL6000 family that provided users with the ability to have 4 Intel based servers inside of a 2U form factor.  Designed to be a low cost compute power offering, the HP ProLiant SL6000 was my first glimpse into what could be the beginning of the end of blade servers.  Why?  The SL6000 family shared power and cooling – just like blade servers.  I’m not sure if the scalable line of HP ProLiant servers has been a huge success (or a failure) but offers it gives HP another way to reach out to customers’ needs.

Fast forward to 2010.  Dell introduces the Dell PowerEdge C Server line.  Geared toward cloud computing, Web 2.0 environments and high performance computing (HPC), the PowerEdge C Server appeared to compete head to head with the HP ProLiant SL family.  Like the HP offering, the Dell PowerEdge C Servers offered multiple server nodes in a small, 2U footprint with shared cooling and power.  From a competitive comparison, there are probably a few differences, but overall they are close enough to be equal.

A few weeks ago, Dell covertly released a new offering to their PowerEdge C Server line that pushes the border between blade servers and “scalable” rack server.  The Dell PowerEdge C5000 Chassis, coupled with Dell PowerEdge C5125 Microserver offers the ability to have 12 compute nodes within a 3U space.  This means in a 42U rack, the PowerEdge C5100 line could provide 672 cores of Intel CPUs.  The Dell PowerEdge C5125 “microserver” is just that – a micro server that is limited to 1 single CPU, 4 memory DIMMs and up to 4 x 2.5” drives.  It’s not a powerhouse server, but it provides CPU compute power.  To put this into perspective, Dell’s M610 blade server maxes out at 768 cores per 42u rack.  As you can see, the Dell PowerEdge C5000 family offers a very close comparison using scaled back microservers. 

Hopefully, you can see my point of view of this blog post.  We now have manufacturers offering higher density servers sharing power and cooling in a small footprint which infringes on some of the value that blade servers bring.  Will this be the end of blade servers, probably not, but as technology continues to advance, maybe one day we’ll have one design offering the best of both the rack server and blade server worlds.  One day.

If you are like me, you are constantly referring to manufacture web sites for product specs, available options, etc.  Today, I’ve put together a list of web sites that will help streamline your search.  Since links change and new ones get added, I’ve put out a “helpful links” tab at the top of my blog as well for you to reference and bookmark.  As I get recommendations from my readers, I’ll update the “helpful links” tab, so be sure to add it to your favorites.

Cisco QuickLinks – http://ciscoquicklinks.com/

Cisco UCS 3 D Model – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ps10265/ps10279/ucs_kaon_model_preso.html

Cisco UCS 5100 Blade Chassis – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10279/index.html

Cisco B-Series Blade Servers – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10280/index.html

Cisco UCS Manager – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10281/index.html

Cisco UCS Site Preparation Guide – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/hw/site_prep/guide/siteprep_tech_specs.html

Manage your Cisco UCS via iPhone App;  SiMU Lab (Simple iPhone Management of UCS) – http://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/simu-lab/id385832700?mt=8

Cisco UCS Emulator Download – http://developer.cisco.com/web/unifiedcomputing/ucsemulatordownload
 

Dell blade solutions (main page) – http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/blade-server-solutions.aspx

Dell M1000e Product Page – http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/pedge_m1000e/pd.aspx?refid=pedge_m1000e

Dell PowerEdge M1000e Technical Guidebook (PDF) - http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-m1000e-tech-guidebook.pdf

Dell Blade Server Product Page – http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/blade-server-solutions-dell-m-series-blade-servers.aspx

Dell Technical Guidebook for the M610 Blade Server (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-m610-tech-guidebook.pdf

Dell Technical Guidebook for the M710 Blade Server (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-m710-tech-guidebook.pdf

Dell M-Series I/O Solutions Guide (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/blade_io_solutions_guide_v1.2_jn.pdf

Dell M1000e Technical Whitepaper (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/poweredge-m1000e-white-paper-en.pdf

Power Distribution Whitepaper for M1000e Chassis (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/pe_m1000e_selection_whitepaper.pdf

Dell Systems Management Consoles Product Page – http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/dcsm-dell-consoles.aspx

Dell Tech Center (single site for Dell technical info, demos, blogs) – http://www.delltechcenter.com/

Dell Power Planning Calculator – http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pedge/topics/en/config_calculator?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

HP BladeSystem Main Page – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/bladesystem/index.html

DDR3 Memory Configurator – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/options/tool/hp_memtool.html

HP BladeSystem Enclosures Main Page – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/enclosures/c-class/index.html

HP Proliant Server Blades Main Page – http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF02d/3709945-3709945-3328410.html

HP Blade Interconnects Main Page – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/c-class-interconnects.html

HP Configurator Tool – http://h30099.www3.hp.com/eGlue/eco/begin.do

HP Server / Software Demo Site (recorded demos) – http://h20324.www2.hp.com/SDP/Content/Booth.aspx?ID=63

HP BladeSystem Power Sizer – http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/cache/347628-0-0-0-121.html

NEW  IBM System x Mobile App: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/resources/mobileapp/

IBM Support site for Fixes and Downloads:  http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/

IBM BladeCenter H Power Recommendation Document (from BladesMadeSimple.com) – PDF, 440kb

IBM Power Guide  – http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101706

IBM BladeCenter Benchmarks – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/resources/benchmarks/results/

IBM BladeCenter Main Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/

IBM BladeCenter Chassis Product Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/chassis/index.html

IBM Blade Server Product Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/servers/

IBM BladeCenter I/O Module Product Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/openfabric/ethernet.html

IBM BladeCenter Interoperability Guide – http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?brand=5000020&lndocid=MIGR-5073016

IBM BladeCenter Products and Technology Redbook – http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/SG247523.html

IBM BladeCenter and System x Reference Documents (xREF) – http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/pages/xref?Open

IBM Standalone Solutions Configuration Tool (SSCT) – http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?brand=5000008&lndocid=MIGR-62168

IBM Server Configuration and Options Guide HTML – http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?brand=5000008&lndocid=SCOD-3ZVQ5W

If I’ve missed any important websites, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll add them.

May 24, 2011  - IDC came out with their 1Q 2011 worldwide server market revenue report today showing that Cisco has finally entered the market standings with a 3rd place standing at 9.4% factory revenue share .  IDC’s findings also showed that both HP and IBM decreased their blade server market share from Q4 2010.

According to IDC, worldwide server sales (all servers, not just blade servers) for 1Q 2011 increased 12.1 % year over year to $11.9 billion in factory revenues. IDC also reported the blade server market accelerated and continued its strong growth in 1Q with revenue increasing 23.8% year over year with shipments increasing to 5.4% compared to 1Q 2010.  Overall, blade servers represent 15.2% of the quarterly worldwide server revenues.  Interestingly enough, 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems, a segment in which blades now represent 20.5% of all x86 server revenue.

Here’s a summary of the top 4 blade server market share (based on factory revenue share):

#1 market share: HP decreased their market share from 53.4% in Q4 2010 to 50.0% in Q1 2011

#2 market share: IBM decreased their market share from 28.1% in Q4 2010 to 20.2% in Q1 2011.

#3 market share: Cisco at 9.4% in Q1 2011

#4 market share: Dell at 8.2% in Q1 2011

HP maintains the #1 market share spot now holding an impressive 50% of all blade server factory revenue market share.  An interesting observation, though, is that both HP and IBM have fallen over the past 12 months when compared to Q1 2010.  As you can see in the chart, HP dropped 6.2% market share and IBM fell 3.4% market share year-over-year.  Is this contributed to Cisco’s entry into the market place? 

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC, “After several years of being a highly consolidated market where the top 3 vendor accounted for over 80% of blade revenue, the recent entry of Cisco has introduced a viable new competitor to the market.”  While the quantities of Cisco UCS customers were not mentioned into the IDC report, according to Cisco’s Omar Sultan’s blog (http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/they-were-wrong-about-ucs-what-else-are-they-wrong-about/) , there are 3,820 customers as of Cisco’s 2nd Fiscal Quarter 2011.

For a full summary of the IDC Quarterly Server Tracker report, visit my other blog at:
http://corus360.com/company/blog/idc-shows-hp-as-the-server-leader-for-q1-2011