I was reading the following article on Network World. Makes some very good observations on how the world of physical servers are changing. My time at Egenera really gave me a glimpse of the future of the data center. Between virtualization at all layers of the data center and cloud computing coming on strong, the revolution of the "server" is changing.

More and more you will see less emphasis on the physical server as a stand alone platform and integrated more with network, storage, and software to have a truly dynamic infrastructure that is much more efficient a resilient.

The big name server vendors are taking notice and realize they had better change or risk getting left behind.

Here is a snippet of the article…

If certain server and virtualization vendors get their way, end-user companies will be buying many fewer individual servers
in a few years, and many more integrated packages of infrastructure.

Virtualization has allowed many companies to reduce the number of their physical servers, but increased demand for compute
power, I/O capacity and storage, according to an April report from IDC.

Read the full article here

Egenera recently announced that they are launching a partner program in EMEA (story below). This could be a game changer if it catches on with the right partners and if it makes it to the US. For most of the past decade Egenera was the innovator that always seemed to be ahead of its time. Sure it had many high profile and successful customers, but most were still trying to figure out who they were. Many had reservations based on the fact that they were not only selling you a management system, but hardware as well (like Cisco UCS does now). Unfortunately the hardware was expensive and a small name it the world of proven server vendors.

That changed when the signed an OEM agreement with Dell. They finally separated the software from the hardware. However traction was still very difficult as it was an entirely new area for both Dell and Egenera and neither could really get the train moving fast enough. Ironically it was not until Cisco brought out UCS that most finally understood the identity of what Egenera was offering. It came at the expense of a giant in the networking area entering as a major competitor. Now there are many advantages for both systems and I will not get into that now.

The major problem with the Cisco UCS system is that it ties people not only to a software package, but a single hardware vendor as well. Not to mention that while Cisco is known in the networking world they are not known as a server vendor. Now while Egenera was able to separate the software from the hardware and enter OEM agreements with server vendors like Dell, it still seemed to be limited. With this announcement of a Partner Program this may be the first step to bringing this type of managed converged network to the masses. Only time will tell!!