A blade is a thin computer system that can be pulled in and out of a specially designed chassis, similar to placing books into a shelf. The IBM chassis housing the blades is known as BladeCenter. IBM has the highest blade density of any major computer vendor, fitting 14 fully functioning blades in a chassis.

The BladeCenter H systems provide a new way to deliver blade technology, by collapsing servers, storage devices, networking infrastructure and security appliances into a single location in the datacentre. They can be used by businesses to run high-performance analytics software and data warehousing applications in industries including finance, retail, health care, life sciences and telecommunications.

New IBM blades and switches include:

• A nine-core IBM Cell blade: the first Cell-based product from IBM. Designed for businesses that need the breakthrough capabilities of the IBM Cell BE processor to tackle tasks involving compute-intensive workloads and broadband media applications, the Cell blade is the first multi-core blade computer.
• A dual-core POWER processor-based BladeCenter JS21: the first blade with built-in virtualization capabilities.The JS21 blade offers the industry's top price-performance for companies specializing in bioinformatics, Grid computing, retail, manufacturing, and petroleum research. In independent testing, it surpasses competitive systems from HP and others on key benchmarks including Linpack, Fasta, SPECint rate2000 and SPECfp rate2000.
• An ultra low power Intel-based BladeCenter HS20: a dual-core blade with the industry's best performance per watt, the HS20 helps customers control the cost of power and cooling in their datacentre.
• The Cisco InfiniBand Switch Module: a 4X InfiniBand switch from Cisco and IBM that provides high-speed interconnect capability. The switch module, specifically designed for the BladeCenter H, is four times faster than previous generations.

The new BladeCenter H systems provide crucial investment protection for IBM customers. They are compatible with existing BladeCenter systems and IBM's current blades and switches can be deployed in the new BladeCenter H system.

"With the introduction of the BladeCenter H, IBM has delivered unprecedented system innovation to help clients simplify and improve overcrowded datacentres", stated Bill Zeitler, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "IBM and the growing BladeCenter ecosystem of partners are producing high performance systems that enable clients to tackle big computing challenges in a cost effective and more efficient manner."

FirstMerit Bank, headquartered in Akron, Ohio, serves more than 500,000 household and business customers and processes more than 500 Gigabytes of data each month on their IBM BladeCenter systems, the equivalent of nearly one-half million accounting books.

"BladeCenter is at the core of our datacentre, allowing us to scale up our computing infrastructure to meet our rapidly growing business demands, which is growing at a rate nearly 20 percent per year”, stated Dave Samic, senior network analyst, FirstMerit Bank. "BladeCenter and IBM storage virtualization technology have resulted in more than $300,000 in technology and management cost savings through consolidation of physical boxes, increased utilization of system assets and easier management. We're looking forward to implementing some of these new innovative technologies, especially the new ultra low-voltage blade that will provide energy and cost-savings to us.”

IBM's BladeCenter is the world's most popular blade computing system, with more than forty percent share of the market and revenue growth of 2600 percent in less than three years. Since its introduction in 2002, IBM has installed more than 350,000 blades for customers, more than any other computer maker.

More than forty technology companies, including IBM and Intel, have formed Blade.org, with new members, bylaws and workgroups. Blade.org is a collaborative organisation focused on facilitating the utilization of blade technology by customers, partners and solution providers. In July, IBM announced the intent to form Blade.org together with Intel and other industry leaders.

New product and solution offerings have been created from collaboration among Blade.org partners, including the IBM Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure, with its initial offering based on BladeCenter, VMware, and Citrix. Companies including Emulex, Myricom, Server Engines and Voltaire are announcing products today supporting BladeCenter H.

IBM has launched new BladeCenter H management tools including:

• Autonomic management module: a new Advanced Management Module that manages blades at the chassis level, automating blade management functions previously done manually. The module integrates with IBM Director and Tivoli.
• Power Executive: a compelling new power management suite allows customers to evaluate their exact datacentre power requirements and utilize blade power and cooling technologies to enable peak utilization.
• Extended Integration with IBM System i5: an industry-standard iSCSI connection to BladeCenter will enable customers to exploit System i5 virtual storage, networking, and tape resources to help simplify the operations of their Windows Server System infrastructure.
• Retail store integration: OS 4690 support allows the IBM Retail Store Systems controller function to be run on BladeCenter H.

BladeCenter H and the Advanced Management Module, which comes standard with each IBM BladeCenter, will be available in March at a starting price of $3849. The BladeCenter JS21 blade will be available in March at a starting price of $2499. The new ultra low power, dual-core Intel Xeon-based BladeCenter HS20 will be available in April at a starting price of $1749.

The Cisco InfiniBand Switch will be available in the second quarter of 2006. Integration of BladeCenter and System i5 is planned to be available for mid-2006. The IBM Cell BE-based blade is planned to be available in the third quarter of 2006.