RESEARCH PAPER: Is “Scalable Blade” an Oxymoron?

Blade servers solved the problem of density for businesses, but they did so with compromises that limited their appeal for many applications. As complexity of both applications and environments grew, blade infrastructures were limited in their effectiveness for the task.

Customers were relegated to lower-density rack servers for their more scalable applications. And while purpose-built systems allowed a business to tailor to their specific needs, they created more management complexity. New flexibility is required to allow modular blade architectures to keep pace with the types of applications that customers need to drive a more agile business. The IBM Flex System X6 family of compute nodes are worth serious consideration for businesses trying to balance the needs of this new generation of agile applications with the desire for more standardization and modularity to hold down total cost of ownership (TCO).

Executive Summary
The Market is Changing and Traditional Blades Can’t Keep Up
Data Changes
Cloud Computing
IT Economics
Picking the Right Tool for the Job
True Modular Systems
Performance
Agility
Resiliency
Clear Business Benefits
Reducing Acquisition Costs
Reducing Operational Costs
Reducing Downtime Costs
Conclusion
Figure 1: Market Dynamics
Table 1: IBM Flex System X6
Table 2: IBM Flex System X6 vs. IBM BladeCenter HX5
Table 3: IBM Flex System X6 Memory
Figure 2: Scalability
Figure 3: Maximizing Uptime
Figure 4: Reducing TCO

You can download the paper here.

Companies Cited

Facebook
IBM
Intel
Microsoft
VMware

Patrick Moorhead

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Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.