by Gary Thome
There are some myths that seem to get propagated around the industry about blades. I want to take the opportunity to address a couple of myths about the blades market growth and where the growth comes from. I hear these myths shared as certain truths by some people, yet the facts clearly refute them.
1. The blades market is growing fast
While this is strictly true, it would be more true to say that the HP BladeSystem market is growing fast. Per IDC, the blades market last year grew 30.5%. Pretty strong growth. However, HP outpaced the market with 71% growth. If you removed HP from the blades market, then the blades market would only be growing at 8.4%, barely ahead of the overall x86 server market growth of 8.3%. IBM underperformed even this level with a 6.5% year over year growth, while Dell actually experienced a 12.2% year over year decline in unit volume!
2. HP’s “blade everything” strategy hurts us.
This might be the case if we were abandoning rack-mount and tower servers. But HP has not stopped investing in rack mount servers. In addition to continuing the ProLiant 300 and 500 series lines, we have also grown the 100 series line of servers as well.
While HP has clearly benefited from blades growth, this has not been at the expense of other form factors. IDC reports that HP had a higher year over year unit growth rate from 2006 to 2007 outside of blades (11.1%) than either IBM, who actually declined 2.4 percent or Dell who grew 7.1%.
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