Building up blade servers.

OEMs lead by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) are trying to spark interest in blade servers by expanding the capabilities of their respective systems. IBM is seen as a market leader in blade systems, servers that can fit book like into chassis and share resources such as power supplies and networking infrastructures. The Armonk, New York-based company, through partnerships with Nortel Networks Ltd. and Cisco Systems Inc., has integrated Ethernet networking switch modules into its BladeCenter systems over the last two months. IBM also will ship its Powerbased JS20 blade server and the four-way HS40, powered by Intel Corp.'s Xeon processors, with Fibre Channel switch blades, management controllers and Fibre Down host bus adapters from QLogic Corp., of Aliso Viejo, California. Other OEMs are also preparing new systems. Dell Computer Corp., of Round Rock, Texas, is working on a new generation of blades, according to officials. At the same time, a separate effort is under way in the industry to develop software for blade servers to make them easier to manage and enable them to interoperate.