HP ships millionth blade

HP has recently announced that it has shipped its one millionth blade server, hitting the milestone before any of its competitors.

"The BladeSystem portfolio is designed to help customers tackle their infrastructure problems," said Wolfgang Wittmer, vice president and general manager of HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers division in EMEA.

"This milestone does not come as a surprise, as HP continues to reign supreme in revenue and shipments for the sizzling blade market. We look forward to shipping our next million blades," Wittmer continued.

According to analyst firm IDC, HP continues to be the leader in revenue and shipments for the blade market, which is predicted to grow 45 per cent in 2008.

"Blades have developed into a mature technology in the data centre," said Thomas Meyer, vice president of Systems Research for IDC in EMEA.

According to Meyer, reliability, scalability, manageability and TCO/ROI remain the top four reasons why many invest in blade servers.

"At the same time, the improvements in features and functions, combo solutions including servers and storage, as well as improvements in the software stack drive the blade proposition further downstream, making it increasingly viable for SMBs."

Continuing on its 'blade everything' strategy, HP recently unveiled several new blades; the Integrity NonStop NB50000c BladeSystem, the ProLiant BL2x220c and the ProLiant BL260c.