In India companies like IBM have large mandates in this space.
Says Viswanath Ramaswamy of IBM, "We are the leaders in the blade market in
India. From Q4 2003 till Q2 2006, a total of 7,845 blades have been sold in the
Indian x 86 markets, out of which IBM has got the largest share of 5,211
blades." IBM has to be given credit for developing the blade market in
India to what it is today. The company has also built a world-class solution
center in Bangalore which has the capability to test and benchmark applications,
and interested enterprises can get themselves trained on Blade Center
technologies. "It has been received very well by customers who have visited
the center. We would be looking at much larger participation from our business
partners to take this platform to the customers says Ramaswamy.
| Blades:
The Power Savers |
| One of the biggest USPs of
blades lies in their power saving features. In a large data center
environment, this translates into huge cost savings. For instance, in a 1U
rack mounted server, it is said that close to 30% of the power would be
consumed by the CPU, and followed by memory at 11%, PCI buses at 3%,
backplane at 4% and disk drives at 6%. The remaining 46% was consumed by
the cooling components like fan and power supplies. In a blade
environment, industry experts claim, the 46% power consumed for cooling in
1U servers comes down to 10% as they use common cooling and power on a
shared basis. This brings in twin benefits of less power and better heat
distribution. On the TCO front, a single blade will cost 25% to 30% less
than a 1U server, will be 33% more effective in terms of power
consumption, and will take up half the floor space. |
 Right now, in an Indian context, the adoption of the blades is
more in the data center environment. According to Suresh Kumar, head, personal
computing products, Wipro, "Adoption of blade servers by large data centers
is faster when compared to other enterprises which have a distributed
architecture. The reason for this is two fold: One, because for any data center
every rack space is a key resource. The other is that a blade server solution
consumes lesser power and thus has lesser cooling load as the cooling and
powering resources are consolidated at the chassis level."
Industry experts also feel that India is a cost conscious market
and in order to boost blade server sales, system integrators and other
technology owners have to look at ways to bring down the initial capital
required. This way the entry barrier is removed and it becomes a much more
attractive proposition for end customers.
Once Indian enterprises are open to adoption of more advanced
server technologies, it will be easier to educate them on blade servers and
assure them of the inherent qualities and reliability. Reflecting on this Sashi
Kanth, general manager, India Business, Fujitsu says, "Indian organizations
may stereotype blade servers as the weaker link when compared to big and bulky
rack servers which they have used and relied upon for a long time. It takes time
to change mindsets as Indian enterprises learn to adapt to newer and more
advanced technologies. Product specialists will have an important role to play
in imparting knowledge in order to create acceptance and confidence in blade
servers."
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"Standardization of I/O
and certain other components in blade servers can significantly drive
costs down, providing an additional reason for customers to go for
them."
-Krithiwas Neelakantan, general
manager, systems practice, Sun Microsystems India |
|
"Blade servers are
slated to contribute at least 15-18% of the x 86 server markets by
2008"
-Viswanath Ramaswamy, country
manager, System x, IBM India |
Computing needs grow as companies expand. When compute resources
such as servers and storage are exhausted, IT managers have to upgrade or
acquire new systems. Exorbitant cost of data center space and utilities force
them to look at high density solutions like blades. With blade servers, space
would no more be an issue, not to mention a host of other benefits such as ease
of maintenance and support.
Blade servers can be used as the standard building block for an
IT backbone. All leading vendors today recommend blade servers not only to MNCs
but also to the SME market in India. Blades on an SME environment have a whole
lot of implications as they can arrive at bigger computing power.
| Blades are
increasingly becoming popular, with successful deployments in data center
environments acting as a key driver for growth |
Today, justifying the cost of blade servers is less of a
challenge for IT managers compared to the early days when blade servers were
first introduced and were much more costly. The ease of installation and
maintenance makes administration and support much easier. From the application
standpoint, blades provide flexibility and are ideal for virtualization. Each
virtual server can run its own applications.
What emerges at the end of the day is that blades are
increasingly becoming popular, with successful deployments in data center
environments acting as a key driver for growth. With enterprises striving for
simplified server management, they are seriously looking at server consolidation
and workin out strategies for arriving at the best possible server
configuration. Enterprises having many tower servers are expanding their
computing power through blades. They are consolidating their server hardware and
arriving at peak functionality by going the blade way. As industry vendors say:
"Blades are poised for a spectacular future."
Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1 2
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