Health & Fitness
Health and Fitness
Health and Fitness
Wed, December 17, 2008
Tue, December 16, 2008 BLADE Network Technologies: Data Center Networking Leader BLADE Network Technologies Maintains Dominance in Blade Server Switch
SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwire - December 16, 2008) - [ BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. ] (BLADE), the trusted leader in data center networking, announced that the privately held company enjoyed a record fourth fiscal quarter during which it shipped more than 500,000 Ethernet ports to conclude its 2008 fiscal year with 54 percent shipment growth over the previous year. In so doing, BLADE maintained its leadership in blade server networking with a 2x lead over the nearest competition. BLADE's new [ 10 Gigabit Ethernet ] (10GbE) [ RackSwitch ] products, introduced in 2008, also position the company to deliver the enhanced network performance required for data center consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing.
"BLADE enjoyed a banner year in 2008 because of our passionate commitment to customer satisfaction and innovative products that out-perform the competition while offering significant savings in cost and power," said Vikram Mehta, president and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies. "We believe that BLADE will continue to meet its aggressive business goals in 2009, despite an economy that has Cisco forecasting that its revenues will be 5 to 10 percent lower than a year ago. BLADE is in a pole position to emerge as a new giant in data center networking -- not just for blade servers, an area it already dominates, but for all types of rack-mounted systems used in today's enterprise data centers."
A recent BLADE switch installation at Phorm ( "[ Phorm ] delivers advertising technology services that are secure, innovative and high performance," said Marc Burgess, Phorm's Senior Vice President of Technology. "We expect the same qualities from our partners. BLADE Network Technologies' RackSwitch offered us the best price performance and the highest level of technical flexibility for our needs. We look forward to working with BLADE as we progress our strategy globally." BLADE has now shipped 5 million Ethernet switch ports to more than 5,000 customers worldwide. Over half of Fortune 500 companies rely on BLADE's Ethernet switches to connect their datacenter servers or racks of servers to each other and to the network. BLADE closed its FY08 with several impressive milestones: BLADE'S Trusted Partners in the Data Center BLADE delivers its award-winning data center networking products to leading enterprises worldwide through its trusted collaborations with [ HP, IBM, NEC and Verari Systems ]. "Customers who want to reduce their infrastructure connectivity costs, lower energy expenses, and reduce implementation times of their 1GbE and 10GbE switches choose HP," said Mark Potter, vice president and general manager, BladeSystem, HP. "Our portfolio of products and partners have made HP the global market leader in blade infrastructure. BLADE's success with their network switch technology makes them a valuable member of our BladeSystem Solution Builder Program and helps us deliver additional blade technology innovations to our customers." "IBM is committed to serving our x86 customers with the widest variety of server platforms and networking technologies available," said Alex Yost, vice president, IBM BladeCenter. "IBM's work with BLADE has resulted in leadership products for our blade-server customers including the first native 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch for blade servers." "As NEC strives to fulfill its role as Japan's leading provider of PC servers, our customers see the value of BLADE's proven approach to integrated blade server networking and as a leader in delivering 10 Gigabit Ethernet networking for enterprise network convergence, data center consolidation and advanced energy efficiency," said Kimihiko Fukuda, General Manager of Client and Server Division, NEC. "BLADE's approach to Rackonomics is particularly well suited for today's global economic environment, providing a rack-level formula for affordably, easily and efficiently equipping next-generation data centers." "BLADE and Verari teamed up to deliver Verari's NB1010 Series BladeSwitch in enabling next-generation data center environments to scale out affordably for increased performance, scalability and energy efficiency," said Dan Gatti, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Market Operations, Verari Systems. "Our ground-breaking work with BLADE in blade server innovation enables customers to fully realize the benefits of virtualization and energy efficiency as they make the move to 10 Gigabit Ethernet with BLADE's best-in-class products." Rackonomics for the New Data Center Frugality To aid data center managers seeking to consolidate and virtualize vital IT systems despite today's tight economy, BLADE champions a new set of rules for the data center known as "[ Rackonomics ]" -- an economical approach for provisioning essential server, storage and networking infrastructure one-rack-at-a-time. Rackonomics empowers enterprise data centers to control costs and contain sprawl while realizing massive scale-out economies. "As enterprises move to consolidate and virtualize their data centers, the demands on networks increase," said Lucinda Borovick, Research Vice President, Datacenter Networks, IDC. "BLADE Network Technologies is delivering Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches in top-of-rack and bladed form factors that are equipped with the low latency and high throughput required for today's network-intensive workloads." BLADE employs more than 327 people across its worldwide offices, including its Santa Clara, CA headquarters, its BLADE Network Research (BNR) development subsidiary in Ottawa, Canada, and sales and support operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific, Japan, China and Korea. About BLADE Network Technologies BLADE Network Technologies is the leading supplier of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet network infrastructure solutions that reside in blade servers and "scale-out" server and storage racks. BLADE's new "virtual, cooler and easier" RackSwitch family demonstrates the promise of "Rackonomics" -- a revolutionary approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. The company's customers include half of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, and an installed base of over 220,000 network switches representing more than 1,100,000 servers and over 5 million switch ports. For more information, visit [ www.bladenetwork.net ]. BLADE Network Technologies, the BLADE logo and RackSwitch are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. All other names or marks are property of their respective owners. -- Through its collaborations with HP, IBM, NEC and Verari Systems, BLADE has delivered more than 220,000 Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches to enterprise data centers to connect over 1.1 million servers. -- In 2008, BLADE introduced its new "Virtual, Cooler and Easier" RackSwitch product family to address the rapidly emerging market for top-of- rack 10GbE data center switches. According to Dell'Oro Group, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is expected to reach 15.1 million ports and represent one quarter of all switch market revenue in 2012 ("Five-Year Ethernet Forecast, July 2008"). -- BLADE's market share of data center switches for blade servers now stands in excess of 48.5 percent combined on HP and IBM blade servers and 66 percent on NEC blade servers. To date, BLADE's market share and Ethernet port shipments on both IBM and HP platforms are more than 2x greater than the nearest competitor's.
