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Friday, October 24, 2008
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IBM and Intel Drive Adoption of Open Switch Specification
for Blade Servers
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IBM and Intel today announced they are extending their ollaboration in the blade server market to drive adoption of an open industry specification for blade switches.
This will enable switch vendors to maximize return on their
research and development by developing products to a single
design, reaching more customers with just one product.
Switches are essential components of every blade system,
channeling data to and from the server. As part of the
agreement announced today, IBM will extend the BladeCenter
switch specification for blade servers to the Server
Systems Infrastructure (SSI) organization on a royalty-free
basis, allowing switch vendors to create one product that
works across the BladeCenter and SSI ecosystems and driving
more switch products for clients to choose from. The
companies also announced plans to work together to
establish a third-party Switch Compliance Lab, where the
developer community can test and verify their blade server
products for BladeCenter and SSI environments.
The announcement today builds upon a history of IBM and
Intel collaboration on blade technology -- starting in 2002
with the development of the first BladeCenter servers and
continuing in 2006 when IBM, Intel and other industry
leaders formed Blade.org.
SSI is an industry organization established over 10 years
ago to enable server builders to develop compliant and
interoperable building blocks for blade, chassis and
manageability software technology. The incorporation of the
open switch specification into SSI is intended to broaden
the market for switch module vendors as they collaborate on
SSI-specified blade switch solutions with Intel and IBM. In
this segment, Blade Network Technologies, Brocade, NextIO
and others have committed their support for the open
specification. By extending its switch specification and
ecosystem to affiliated members of SSI, IBM is driving
greater adoption of BladeCenter-compatible switches. |
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