Additional changes
Beyond the 24-month window, but still within the five-year planning window, Gartner anticipates the following set of additional changes:Chassis Interconnections — Today the chassis represents an infrastructure boundary. However, in three to five years time, chassis interconnects will enable resources to be shared. Although Gartner expects this innovation to be introduced as a blade market capability, it will eventually become a valuable direction for other server form factors as well.
Memory Aggregation — Memory aggregation will enable one blade to use memory located on other blades in the server. The net effect will be to increase memory footprints for an operating system beyond the physical capacity of a single blade. This will further drive implementation of blade server aggregation to create larger-style, virtual symmetric multiprocessor designs. By 2012, memory and chassis aggregation will enable blade technology to address large vertically scaling workloads.
Standards for Switch Modules — The current chassis do not currently support a common interface and as a result, third-party companies such as Cisco and Brocade must make unique products for each and every server vendor. This is inefficient use of their R&D resources. Gartner predicts an interface and form-factor standard will be introduced during this time frame to enable third-party companies to manufacture products common to multiple vendor chassis. However, it is unlikely that other blade- or chassis-related standards will be agreed on by major vendors during the next five years.
