The blade option

Global PC giant HP has announced a series of measures, both in terms of tech
features as well as pricing, to attract corporate users that want much more than
their traditional PC can offer. As CIOs and IT managers of growing organisations
struggle with reduced IT budgets on and hand, and the need for better
infrastructure control, scalability, security, and increasing energy
requirements on the other, blade technology is emerging to be a formidable
option for future. No wonder then that blade solutions is becoming more and more
prominent on the menu card of other vendors like Lenovo, Dell, and Sun, all of
whom have gone on partnership spree with other technology companies.

The latest move from HP, to build up its portfolio of remote client
solutions, is the tie-up with Citrix.

This agreement will give business customers solu­tions that integrate
affordability with high-performance blade PCs better manageability, scalability
and security. “Based on HPs blade PCs bc2800 and bc2200 and Citrix's XenDesktop
software, we now offer a cost-efficient client virtualization solution for
companies that want to upgrade and better manage their IT infrastructure in this
challenging economic environment,” said Dennis Mark, VP and GM-Personal Systems
Group, HP.

Energy is a big issue, specially in the growing economies the world over, and
blade technology is touted as the best solution for that. “At 25 watts per
blade, our solution offers the highest rack density and lowest power usage of
any blade client solution in the market today. With capacity for 280 blades per
rack and using only 7.4 kilowatts, users can maximize available rack space and
implement larger deployments without having to build additional and costly power
and cooling systems. Combined with energy-efficient thin clients, the new blade
PCs create a complete client virtualization solution that uses significantly
less energy than a traditional desktop PC,” informed Tom Flynn, Chief
Technolo­gist,Desktop Solutions Organization, HP. Users like Bas Berendsen, IT
Manager at Optiver, a Amsterdam-based securities trading firm, agree.

What is now clearly emerging is that blades are not just about energy
efficieny, as it is often percieved to be. “We needed a solution that was
innovative, high perfor­mance, flexible an dreliable. The blade solution has
revolutionized the use of IT in teaching, and significantly reduced opex,”
claimed Luke Angel, Principal Technology Officer at the University of
Queensland. Technologists agree that it offers simplified and highly secure
management for confidential and business-critical data applications, and help
users meet regulatory standards. And for simpler IT management it offers
advanced administrator tools, including remote access, control of hardware and
software configuration and quick setup, as well as user allocation tools. Blades
give users a streamlined client architecture for enhanced, high-definition user
graphocs and multimedia experience from any device on any network. The
combination of blade PC and desktop management solution enable organiza­tions to
leverage the power of the data center and, endpoint devices to significantly
reduce desktop total cost of ownership.

For instance the HP blade PCs bc2800 (AMD Turion X2 TL-66 dual-core
processor, 767 MHz memory speed and integrated ATI graphics), and bc2200
(single-core AMD Athlon 64 processor, 520 MHz memory speed and integrated ATI
graphics) offer all of the above. Expected to be available in March, both will
come pre-installed with Windows Vista Business edition and support a range of
operating systems