The Next Tsunami in
Computing & Communications

Modular Computing, using blade server and clustering technology, will create the next Tsunami in computing and communications, that portends to drastically overhaul the existing client/server landscape.

Its impact on end-to-end computing and internet infrastructure would be truly profound. Existing IT architectures in commercial (Uniprocessor, SMP, ccNUMA) and high-performance scientific computing (MPP etc), would be displaced by a cluster of virtual servers to meet the needs of four-tiered Web Computing for cached data access, load balanced web servers, web-services application servers and database/transaction servers. Networking, I/O Storage and Servers would all emanate from a common blade architecture.

The four waves in modular computing in the next five years, namely, High Availability 2002-03, Scalability, 2003-04, Virtualization/ 2004-05 and Application Tuning/ Performance Enhancements 2004-06 will radically change the economics of computing and web services, according to Anil Vasudeva, Principal Analyst at IMEX Research.

Modular Computing's attractiveness stems from the "volume driven economics" of industry standard high-volume 2, 4 and 8+ way SMP compute elements that can be configured into various telecom, networking, servers or storage modules.

These modular servers can be architected to achieve High Availability (failovers and self-healing), Scalability (simple add-ins), Performance (like Oracle parallel servers), Interoperability (Heterogeneity - MVS, UNIX, NT; Connectivity - ESCON, Fibre Channel, iSCSI), Manageability (CIM/WBEM-web based) and Security for provisioning in 4-tiered Computing and Internet Infrastructures.

Already, a number of top 500 scientific computers are using Linux Clusters to achieve high performance at a fraction of the cost of previous multimillion dollar scientific behemoths.

IMEX is a research and consulting company in technology markets with expertise in the fields of Blade Servers/Modular Computing, Network Storage, and High Availability systems (Computing and Telecom, Four-tiered Internet Computing).

The company helps its clients with identifying emerging trends and industry directions, product planning, including specs, features, and benefits, emerging technologies and industry standards, market sizing and forecasts data,strategic positioning of major players and their competitive tactics.

IMEX also provides Product Launch and Go to Market strategies including selection of Distribution Channels (OEMs, VARS/SI, xSPS, Distributors/Dealers by Vertical Markets Telecomm, Financials, Health Care etc.) as well as our diligence and opportunistic recommendations for affiliations and acquisitions.