Executive Summary | TOC | Order

The Next Tsunami in
Computing & Communications

Modular Computing, using blade servers and clustering technology, is creating the next Tsunami in computing and communications that portends to drastically revamp the existing client/server landscape. Its impact on end-to-end computing and internet infrastructure will be truly profound.

Existing IT architectures in commercial (Uniprocessor, SMP, ccNUMA) and high-performance scientific computing (MPP etc) will be displaced by a cluster of virtual servers. These new servers will revolutionize 4-tiered Web Computing: the Access Tier, Web Tier, Application Tier, and DB/Transaction Tier. 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.

Blade Servers' attractiveness stems from the volume-driven economics achieved through using industry standard high-volume 2, 4 and 8+ way SMP compute elements. These elements 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 industry trends and directions, market opportunities, emerging technologies and industry standards, and positioning of major players and their competitive strategies.

IMEX also provides consulting and advisory services in product and business planning, competitive analysis, product specs and features, go-to-market strategies, distribution channels (OEMs, VARS/SI, Service Providers, Distributors/ Dealers by Vertical Markets Telecomm, Financials, Health Care etc.) as well as due diligence and opportunistic recommendations for affiliations and acquisitions.