Cisco announced on Jan. 26, 2012 a field replacement program for Cisco UCS B440 Blade Servers.  Cisco Field Notice FN – 63430 describes the problem as a failure of a MOSFET, or Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor, power transistor on the blade server that can cause the component to overheat and emit a short flash which could lead to complete board failure.  According to Cisco.com, Cisco is directly contacting UCS B440 Blade Server customers and will replace UCS B440 Blade Servers currently deployed at customer sites.  Cisco is making UCS B440 Blade Server hardware modifications, and a hardware replacement program has been launched.

To identify the affected systems and any available workaround, please visit the Cisco Field Notice at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/ts/fn/634/fn63430.html

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 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

If you’ve been reading this blog over the past six months, you’ll know that I’ve continued to bust on Cisco for not providing market share numbers after selling their UCS product line for two years.  I believe the wait is now over.

I’m hearing rumours that this next week (May 23 – 27, 2011) we should finally be seeing Cisco’s UCS market share numbers.  From what I’m hearing, the numbers are going to be very positive for Cisco.  To be perfectly clear, I have not heard of any official market share numbers, but I know that IDC should be releasing their Q1 2011 Blade Market Share numbers next week so if the rumours are right, we’ll see Cisco on their chart.  I’ve heard from an unofficial source that Cisco sold about ~17,000 blade servers in Q1, 2011.  If this turns out to be true, I am not sure that Cisco UCS will be in the #3 blade server spot as Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, commented in a Cisco Financial Analyst Conference in Q4 of 2010: http://blogs.cisco.com/ar/john_chambers_discusses_ucs_market_share__wow/ 

Since I’m not an analyst, I can only wait until next week when “hopefully” the curtain will be lifted and we’ll finally get to see what the true story is behind Cisco UCS’ market share.

Stay tuned…

Cisco announced today the refresh of their UCS B440 M2 and B230 blade servers with the newly announced Intel Xeon E7.  The Cisco UCS B440 M2 is a full-width blade that offers up to 4 Xeon E7-4800 processors and 32 memory slots, for up to 512GB RAM, as well as 4 hot-swap drive bays.  Since the server is a full-width blade, it will have the capability to handle 2 dual-port mezzanine cards for up to 40 Gbps I/O per blade.  Each Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis can house up to four B440 M2 servers (maximum 160 per Unified Computing System). 

The Cisco UCS B230 M2 offers 32 DIMM slots handling up to 256GB of RAM, 2 x Intel E7-2800 CPUs and 2 x hot-swap drives, all within a half-width form factor.  Each Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis can house up to eight B230 M2 servers (a maximum of 320 per Cisco Unified Computing System). 

Specific speeds of the Intel Xeon E7 CPUs being offered by Cisco were not available at the time of this writing.  Availability is unknown but expected to be around late Q2 2011.

For more details about Cisco UCS blade servers, visit Cisco’s web site at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10280/index.html

For more information on the Intel Xeon E7 Product Family, click here.

Revised with corrections  3/1/2011 10:29 a.m. (EST)
Almost a year ago, I wrote an article highlighting the 4 socket blade server offerings.  At that time, the offerings were very slim, but over the past 11 months, that blog post has received the most hits, so I figured it’s time to revise the article.  In today’s post, I’ll review the 4 socket Intel and AMD blade servers that are currently on the market.  Yes, I know I’ll have to revise this again in a few weeks, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. 

Cisco

Cisco released their first 4 socket blade offering in April 2010  known as the “UCS B440 M1“.

 This blade is a full-width blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs (6 to 8 cores)
• Max of 512GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 2 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 4 x hot-swap drive bays

The Cisco UCS B440 M1 blade server also has 2 x mezzanine expansion card slots that are capable of holding a variety of converged network adapters (CNAs) with a minimum of 10GbE connectivity.  Each Cisco UCS 5108 chassis can hold 4 x UCS B440 M1 for a total of 28 UCS B440 M1′s per 42u rack.  To save you from doing the math, that’s a max of 896  CPU cores and 14.3TB of memory per 42u rack. 

You can read more about the Cisco UCS B440 M1 on Cisco.com.

Dell
Dell has two 4 socket blade offerings, the PowerEdge M905 and the PowerEdge M910.  Anytime you see a “5″ at the end of a Dell server number, you can be assured that it has an AMD processor whereas the servers ending in “0″ are Intel processors.

The PowerEdge M905 is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x AMD Opteron 8300 or 8400 (up to 6 cores)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 192GB (across 24 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

The PowerEdge M910 is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 (up to 8 cores)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 512GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

Each Dell M1000e chassis can hold 8 x PowerEdge M905 or PowerEdge M910′s for a total of 32 Dell PowerEdge M905/M910 per 42u rack.  To save you from doing the math, for the M905 that’s a max of 768 CPU cores and 6.1TB of memory per 42u rack; for the M910 that’s a max of 1024 CPU cores and 16.3TB of memory per 42u rack.

You can find out more about the Dell PowerEdge M905 and PowerEdge M910 on Dell.com.

HP

HP has been in the 4 socket blade offering space for the longest, so they have the largest collection of servers to review.  Keep in mind, the “Gx” at the end of the server signifies the family generation of the product, so the G5 is older than the G7 (yes, common sense, but if I don’t spell it out, someone will comment on it…)

The BL680c G5 is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7400 CPUs (up to 6 cores each)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 128GB (across 16 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

(You may ask – why am I listing this older generation blade server?  Quite simply because HP still mentions it on the HP.com website.)

The BL680c G7  is the next generation to the BL680 G5 and it was first mentioned June 2010.  The BL680 G7 is a double-width (2 x full-height) blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs (up to 8 cores each)
• 6 x 10Gb FlexFabric NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 1TB (across 64 DIMM slots)
• 7 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 4 x hot-swap drive bays

HP uses a naming schema that is fairly easy to understand.  Anytime you see a “5″ at the end of a HP server number, you can be assured that it has an AMD processor whereas the servers ending in “0″ are Intel processors.   HP offers a pair of AMD servers that parity the  2 Intel blade servers mentioned above.

The BL685c G6  is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x AMD Opteron 8300 or 8400 (up to 6 cores)
• 4 x 10Gb Flex-10 NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 256GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

The BL685c G7  is the newest AMD offering in a full-height blade that comes with:

• 4 x AMD Opteron 6100 (up to 12 cores)
• 4 x 10Gb FlexFabric NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 512 GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 3 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

I’ll be talking about FlexFabric in the near future, but for now think of it as HP’s version of the Converged Network Adapter.  You can read more  at www.hp.com/go/flexfabric.

Here are the totals (sorry, too much info for fancy summarizing:)

BL680c G5

BL680c G7

BL685c G6

BL685c G7

You can find out more about HP’s blade servers at HP.com.

IBM

The IBM HX5 was announced March 2010.   The HX5 is a 2 CPU blade server that uses a modular approach allowing users to add a memory blade (called the MAX5) or an 2nd HX5 to create a 4 CPU offering.  While I covered the technology back in March (check it out here) I’m looking at the 2 x HX5 combination as IBM’s 4 socket offering.

The IBM HX5  is a double-wide (2 x 30mm) blade that comes with:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs (up to 8 cores each)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 256GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 4 x internal drive bays

Each IBM BladeCenter H chassis can hold 7 x HX5 blade servers for a total of 28 HX5 blade servers per 42u rack.  To save you from doing the math, that’s a max of 896 CPU cores and 7.1TB of memory per 42u rack.

Summary
Here’s a summary of all of the current 4 socket blade servers (click to enlarge):

Here’s a summary of the top offerings (shown in yellow on the chart):

Most CPU Cores in a Blade Server:  HP BL685c G7
Most I/O Expansion in a Blade Server: HP BL680c G7
Most Memory in a Blade Server: HP BL680c G7

Most Memory in a 42u Rack: (tie) Dell M910, HP BL680c G7, HP BL685c G7
Most CPU Cores in a 42u Rack: HP BL685c G7

Yes, I know that there are slim chances that anyone would fill up a rack with 4 socket servers, however I thought this would be good comparison to make. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below.

I was updating a slide deck that I use to compare blade server technologies for customers when I came across the IDC and Gartner data from Q3 of 2009.  I was very surprised at what I found out, so today’s post takes a look back at 2009 and compares it to 2010.

I have tried to update my readers of the market share reports that IDC posts each quarter and over the past few quarters I commented about HP’s blade server market share decreasing, however when you take a step back and look at Q3 2009, you’ll see that HP’s market share was 50.7%, IBM’s market share was 29.4% and the overall percentage of blade servers in the x86 market place was 13.6%.

In comparison, when you take a look at Q3 2010, HP’s market share increased to 54.1% while IBM’s market share lowered to 26.8%.  In a year’s time, the overall server marketplace showed a huge increase in blade servers to 18.9%!

I also came across the first Gartner Magic Quadrant for blade servers, so I decided to put them side-by-side to see how they quadrant changed from October of 2009 to January of 2011.

However, that didn’t help much, so I decided to overlay the two chart (below), which showed some interesting things. 
1) HP barely moved
2) IBM moved up and to the right
3) Dell moved to the right, but dropped down
4) Cisco moved up and to the right

That is the end of what I wanted to say.  Didn’t really want to analyze too much, as the images speak for themselves.  I’d love to hear what your thoughts are – feel free to comment below.

Updated 1/27/2011
Dell quietly announced the addition of a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switch module, known as the M8428-k.  This blade module advertises 600 ns low-latency, wire-speed,  10GbE performance, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switching, and low-latency 8 Gb Fibre Channel (FC) switching and connectivity.
In this era of virtualization in the datacenter, CPU and RAM capabilities on servers are no longer the bottleneck, but instead it is the servers’ I/O.  Technology vendors are now offering 10Gb Ethernet options which helps to reduce the traditional Ethernet I/O bottleneck.  In fact, many vendors have begun to offer a convergence of networking allowing both Ethernet and Storage commands to travel down a single converged pipe.  These devices, known as converged network switches have been around since Cisco first introduced their Nexus product a couple of years ago.  The design of the original converged switch took a single 10Gb cable to a Top of Rack (ToR) switch in which the Ethernet traffic and the fibre storage traffic was separated.

Over the past 9 months we’ve seen a surge of a new generation of converged switches, that does not require a ToR switch, but instead splits the Ethernet and Fibre traffic out of a single module within a blade chassis.  The advantages of this approach are: it frees up blade server mezzanine (expansion card) slots and it also requires fewer modules within a blade chassis therefore freeing up space for additional future fabrics.  In late December 2010, Dell announced their next generation converged module, called the M8428-k Converged 10GbE Switch Module.  The M8428-k has 28 ports: 16 internal and 12 external.  The 12 external ports are made up of:

*8 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) speed and Data Center Bridging (DCB). 
*4 Fibre Channel ports: that support 2, 4, and 8 Gbps full duplex

The 16 internal ports (one per Dell M1000e Server bay) supports DCB and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).  One last point to make, the module comes with all ports activated.  This is an advantage over some competitors that offer upgrade licenses to activate additional ports.

UPDATE – Currently the only compatible blade server mezzanine Converged Network Adapter (CNA) is the BR1741M-k.  This card provides FCoE connectivity from blade server to the M8428-k Converged Switch Module.  You can read more about this card on this Dell site.

For more information ont he Dell M8428-k Converged 10GbE Switch Module, visit Dell.com.

Technology analyst, Gartner, released their Magic Quadrant focused specifically on blade servers this week and the results were not very surprising.

The Magic Quadrant is a tool Gartner uses to visually define a given market segment showcasing technology vendors who are leading the market in 4 areas:

• leaders – vendor placement based on current market share
• visionaries – vendors who, according to Gartner, “will either represent the discontinuous leading edge of the market or will be large vendors with a plan to drive market success through technology innovation and a narrower product portfolio.”
• challengers – defined by Gartner as, “vendors with a strong global presence that are focusing their blade strategies on a broad set of target clients, rather than on pure innovation.”
• niche players – defined by Gartner as vendors who focus  on a “market that addresses specialized “edge” niches of the broader server market well, and this will naturally drive innovation by small vendors that may only address certain geographies, verticalized markets (such as HPC or cloud infrastructure) or specific workload situations.”

As we review the outcome of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, we can come to the conclusion that Gartner considers HP the market leader in blade servers with IBM and Dell following.  Gartner reflects that while IBM is close to HP in market share, HP has a better ability to execute. 

Gartner’s evaluation criteria definition of ”ability to execute” is rather lengthy, but covers 7 areas:

• Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in/serve the defined market.
• Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization’s financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization’s portfolio of products.
• Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor’s capabilities in all pre-sales activities and the structure that supports them.
• Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change.
• Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization’s message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers.
• Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated.
• Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments.

Do I agree with Gartner on the placement of HP, IBM and Dell on their Magic Quadrant?  That’s tough to answer.  There are no metrics defined like in a traditional graph, so without seeing the numbers behind Gartner’s diagram it’s hard to speculate on whether IBM should be closer or farther away from HP.  The only comment I have is regarding the public opinion of IBM’s “Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization)”.   I’ve met many individual users who believe that IBM’s days in the server market are limited.  Now, of course, that is purely their opinion – based primarily on their move of allowing Lenovo to use their low-end x86 servers.  I would argue against this looking at a) IBM’s blade chassis lifespan goes into 2014 and b) seeing IBM’s innovation of the HX5 blade server.  However, my point is that there is uncertainty in the public eye which may or may not have affected Gartner’s opinion on where to place IBM. 

As for Dell, I personally would have expected them higher up on the “ability to execute” portion of the chart.  Whereas they have a long way to go with their market share numbers, Dell does a phenomenal job marketing their blade server product.  My only thought as to why they aren’t higher up is around Customer Exprience.  In the past, things like customer support has been a thorn in Dell’s side.  While they may have resolved this internally, there may be customers who still have distaste for Dell which may or may not have affected Gartner’s opinion.

Another observation from the Magic Quadrant is Cisco’s placement as a “visionary”.  According to the Magic Quadrant, Cisco has a more completeness of vision over Fujitsu.  Gartner’s evaluation criteria definition of ”completeness of vision” covers 8 areas:

• Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers’ wants and needs and to translate those into products and services.
• Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
• Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.
• Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor’s approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements.
• Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor’s underlying business proposition.
• Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.
• Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
• Geographic Strategy: The vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geograp
  hies outside the “home” or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.

Do I agree with Gartner on the placement of Cisco on their Magic Quadrant? Believe it or not, YES.  It’s no surprise that Cisco isn’t high up on the market share chart, but they are viciously attacking the marketplace leaning on their leadership in the networking market to displace legacy server environments.  Cisco’s approach of centralized blade management is an innovative approach that will definitely give them an advantage in existing Cisco shops.  In regards to Gartner’s opinion on where to place Cisco within the visionary section of their Magic Quadrant I can’t really comment on because I don’t know Fujitsu.  Gartner comments that Fujitsu’s innovation lies within their Primergy BX900 Dynamic Cube server, which “will compete with Cisco’s UCS and HP’s BladeSystem Matrix” but more research (on my part) is needed before I can comment.

Overall, I believe the Gartner Magic Quadrant is a nice visual tool, but without seeing the data supporting the placement of the vendors on the chart, I have to consider the information more of an opinion than fact.  Regardless, it’s interesting data and usually sparks some good conversations.

 To read the full Gartner report, please visit:

http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/hp/vol3/article7/article7.html