The changes that took place in the entry server market last year pale in comparison to what's coming.
Server blades offer significant improvements in three main areas.
They'll save space in the datacenter. They'll conserve power, and they'll improve dynamic workload management. The combination of the first two factors will drive demand. Because the server blade architecture could allow datacenters to deploy hundreds of CPUs in a rack and consume less power, not only are datacenter needs for managing power consumption addressed, but the processing power per square foot is dramatically increased. All of these enhancements are becoming increasingly important to Internet-centric businesses, and within five years, IDC expects demand for server blades to explode.