The Real Story About Blade.org - FAQs
 

What is Blade.org?

Blade.org is a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of blade server solutions. The organization provides leadership to the blade market and fosters a thriving industry ecosystem focused on delivering valuable solutions to blade computing customers.

What is Blade.org's primary objective?

The overarching objective for Blade.org is to provide value to the blade server customer. With "Blade.org solutions," Blade.org has designed a program to give customers the confidence that an offering has met requirements for quality and that it has been deployed successfully in a customer environment.

Who benefits from Blade.org?

The industry at large benefits from the momentum and innovation that is coming out of Blade.org. Blade customers benefit from the growing breadth of new applications and solutions and the membership of Blade.org benefits from the community environment where there is opportunity to form new partnerships, leverage complementary technologies, and impact the direction of the market.

How is Blade.org different from HP's BladeSystem Solution Builder program and IBM's BladeCenter Alliance Program?

Blade.org is unlike either of these company-run programs because Blade.org is not a program run by a company; it is a consortium that depends upon the leadership and participation of its members. Blade.org is the only blade organization promoting and expanding upon an open hardware architecture and creating opportunities and choice for members and customers.

Is Blade.org managed by IBM?

The Blade.org organization is structured in such a way that no single company controls the organization. Like most .orgs, Blade.org's organizational structure includes a Governing Board, voting members and non-voting members. IBM has one vote, just like all other voting members.

What is IBM's role in Blade.org?

The companies in Blade.org have joined forces to define, deliver and validate solutions around IBM BladeCenter while strengthening the ecosystem. IBM continues to energize the ecosystem around the Blade Server specifications by providing a leadership platform that seamlessly incorporates new technologies and by providing continued support for the third party ecosystem.

Who are the members of Blade.org?

Blade.org is a community inclusive of customers, hardware companies, software companies, distributors, resellers, venture capitalists and others. Both Intel and AMD are members of Blade.org along with other major industry players. The member companies of Blade.org are in complete support of an open hardware architecture, which helps to create choice for blade customers.

Can you provide an example of Blade.org member collaboration?

By creating an open, collaborative environment, Blade.org is putting the collective ingenuity of its members to work on challenges and opportunities within the blade server ecosystem. One example of member collaboration is Blade Network Technologies and NetXen collaboration through Blade.org to deliver the industry's first solution offering of 10GE connectivity for blade servers.

Who are some of the current customers choosing blade solutions developed by Blade.org members?

Customers from around the world benefit from Blade.org's innovative and robust blade-based solutions. One example is the Asian Art Museum. Avnet, DataCom, Blade Network Technologies, and IBM developed a blade solution that would enable the Asian Art Museum to tighten security for its world-renowned collection of more than 16,000 Asian Artworks. The customer is very happy about the contributions of these Blade.org member companies.

Will Blade.org focus on standards in the future, or will it partner with other .orgs who are working on standards?

Blade.org's top area of focus is to foster a collaborative community of customers and members to expand the blade ecosystem. Standards may be a key focus area in the future but is not at the moment.

What is Blade.org doing to ensure compliance and interoperability?

Compliance and interoperability are key focus areas for Blade.org and should be important to any organization. The Blade.org compliance program is currently accepting new vendors.

The Real Story About Blade.org

By creating an open, collaborative environment, Blade.org is putting the collective ingenuity of its members to work on challenges and opportunities within the blade server ecosystem. Read one member's opinion.