It shows strong growth in demands for Blade Server. According to IDC Korea, market for Blade Server is growing at aggressive speed; in particular, the enterprise customers are doing serious upgrades-server consolidation, blade servers along with Windows market.

According to the industry, sales of Blade servers were up from 600 units in first half to over 1000 units in each of third and fourth quarter last year. The 4th qtr. reported strongest with over 1300 units being sold.

The overall market sales figures break down with IBM Korea, dominating blade server sales with 600 units in 3rd quarter, 1000 in 4th quarter. HP Korea also adding the overall market sales with 200 units in each of its 3rd and 4th quarter. Dell Korea round off with little less than 200 units sold.

The market analysts projected same kind of sales figures for this year too, with Blade Server taking up 10 to 15 percent of overall sales in x86 server market.

IDC Korea forecasted, "Domestic Blade server market sales will grow 52.4% annually, in 2010; projects market sales of $123.5 million." It also projects strong annual growth of 68.4% in shipments until 2010 with sales of 33,987 servers.

It figures that added interest in Blade server by manufactures and public agencies, pushing strong sales in small to mid range businesses are reason behind the solid growth in Blade Server.

"Targeting major enterprise customers with small to mid size businesses to promote Blade server, strong sales outlet promotions were most effective" and "not only to schools, research labs and public sectors but also extending into manufacturing, transporting, SMB had paid off big." HanShin Myoung, Product Manager xSeries, STG for IMB Korea, said.

Opting for Windows platform Blade systems
The great serge in Blade server related market also drove Windows server demand. According to the industry, the Windows takes 70 to 90% of all Blade servers supplied in the market presently. Also 70 to 80% of all Blade servers supplied by IBM Korea has Windows platform, Dell Korea and HP Korea also put out 90% of their Blade servers with the Windows.

HanShin Myoung, "Majority of the Blade servers have Windows platform and providing them with virtual solution VMware, market responded very well."

This trend is due to Blade server replacing obsolete web application server, mail server, and file servers. Especially in enterprises, it’s increasingly choosing the Windows server over Linux platform server.

"Major enterprises and SMB market clients look for Blade server more than IDC center. They prefer easiness of managing of Windows over Linux. This is especially true with those upgrading." Jun Choi, Server Brand Manager of Dell Korea explained.

IDC Korea said, "With the rapid growth in Blade servers since second half of 2005, Windows installations too continues to go along with that figures. In first half of 2006, it surpassed Linux by 360 units, taking 64% market share” and “The change in the market dominance of Linux to Windows hints Blade server overcoming the stage of early adaptation and now entering into main stream market"