Industry sources have claimed that comments made by
Michael Dell at last week's OracleWorld conference in San Francisco
have helped derail plans to launch an industry-wide initiative
aimed at standardising server components.
A group of companies led by Dell, Intel, IBM and Hewlett-Packard
were to have announced a modular computing initiative to define
common software APIs (application programming interfaces), hardware
interconnects and form factors for high-density servers earlier
this week.
But plans to go public with the modular computing initiative
were put on hold after Dell's chief executive officer leaked news
of the effort during a keynote address at OracleWorld, industry
sources said.
Dell revealed his company was "in discussions with some fairly
large computer companies to get some agreement on a standard blade
architecture".
He said a lack of industry standards for blades was holding back
the adoption of the nascent server architecture. "This thing's
going to go nowhere unless you get a standard," he said.
Dell's comments did not go down well with other members of the
modular computing initiative, who felt his remarks misrepresented
it as a blade-centric effort. The initiative aims to define
components for a variety of server types, not just blades, sources
said. "There were companies that were a little upset by those
comments," said one source close to the negotiations.
Blade servers are thin servers that slide side-by-side into a
common chassis. They have proved popular with certain types of
users, such as telecommunication companies, but have not been as
widely adopted as analysts first expected. The delay in blade
adoption has been attributed, in part, to the fact that blade
servers and chassis from different suppliers are incompatible.
HP and IBM in particular, who each have invested heavily in
developing blade systems and have no desire to see them
commoditised, were upset by Dell's comments, said another source.
The public announcement of the initiative has been now been
delayed, but it is understood it will be made within the next
month.
HP spokesman Tim Wileford claimed Dell's comments alone did not
stop the announcement, adding that the initiative was not unveiled
on Wednesday because there is still "no defined agreement that
outlines the scope and charter of this initiative".
HP apparently is not ready to sign up for an initiative focused
on blade standards.
"All of the calls for blades standards to date have been thinly
veiled attempts by vendors who lack a significant presence in the
blades marketplace to get access to technology that they did not
invent and access to markets that they did not develop," said
Wileford.
"HP views blade technology as still rapidly evolving; it is
premature to stifle innovation through various implementation
standards based on initial products."
Intel spokeswoman Erica Fields claimed the announcement was not
made because the timing was wrong.
"I think the companies decided that there wasn't a lot to say
yet," she said. "We're still in the early stages."
Dell's remarks were meant to be taken as general comments on the
lack of standards in the blade space, and not as a
"pre-announcement" of any blade standards effort, said Dell
spokeswoman Wendy Giever.
"He wasn't specifically speaking of any particular standards
body," she said. "There was no announcement of anything new on the
standards front from Michael Dell at OracleWorld."
Giever declined to comment on whether an announcement had been
planned for Wednesday. IBM also declined to comment on any planned
announcement.
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News Service