Data Center Model Blade Server Markets Explained: The Sun Blade 8000 Modular System is poised to bring blade efficiencies to new applications. It is no secret that the blade server market has witnessed dramatic growth. As businesses struggle to increase processing power within existing data center space, blades have witnessed a growing share of server markets — especially in the Web and light-application tiers. Aside from the anecdotal evidence, IDC estimates that blade servers will grow at a cumulative rate of 42.7 percent between 2006 and 2010 — achieving a 25 percent share of the entire market by that time frame. Still, despite the impressive figures, today's blades are largely relegated to niche applications within the data center. Due to design compromises that curtail processing power, I/O throughput, and on-board memory, blades are currently limited in deployment options and best suited for the Web and light-application tiers. With the introduction of revolutionary new modular technology, Sun has broken through this barrier into areas previously dominated by rackmount servers, including heavy application and database serving.

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The Sun Blade 8000 Modular System is poised to bring blade efficiencies to new applications.

It is no secret that the blade server market has witnessed dramatic growth. As businesses struggle to increase processing power within existing data center space, blades have witnessed a growing share of server markets — especially in the Web and light-application tiers. Aside from the anecdotal evidence, IDC estimates that blade servers will grow at a cumulative rate of 42.7 percent between 2006 and 2010 — achieving a 25 percent share of the entire market by that time frame.

Still, despite the impressive figures, today's blades are largely relegated to niche applications within the data center. Due to design compromises that curtail processing power, I/O throughput, and on-board memory, blades are currently limited in deployment options and best suited for the Web and light-application tiers. With the introduction of revolutionary new modular technology, Sun has broken through this barrier into areas previously dominated by rackmount servers, including heavy application and database serving.

The Growing Appeal of Blades and the Challenges They Face

The recent success of blades is no accident. As CIOs and IT managers wrestle with shrinking budgets and rising costs, they are considering adding or replacing rackmount or blade systems in their data centers because existing server technology is not aligning with their business strategies. The overall challenges IT organizations are facing require: