BLADE Network Technologies


BLADE Network Technologies, based in Santa Clara, California, was a supplier of Ethernet network switches for blade servers and server and storage data center racks.
BLADE became part of IBM System Networking in 2010. Later sold to Lenovo as part of purchase of IBM x86 server division

History

On February 13, 2006, Garnett & Helfrich Capital
established BLADE Network Technologies, Inc., as a privately held company from a spin-out of Nortel's Blade Server Switch Unit, focused on networking for the blade server market.
Vikram Mehta was president and CEO.

Partners

In 2008, the company introduced its RackSwitch line of top-of-rack 1-10 Gigabit Ethernet data center switches. The company's customers included Fortune 500 companies across 26 industry segments, with more than 220,000 network switches and over 5 million switch ports connecting more than 1,100,000 servers.
IBM acquired BLADE in October 2010.
Lenovo acquired IBM's server business, including BLADE in 2014.

Technology and products

BLADE called its products "top-of-rack" and bladed 1-10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for high-performance computing, multimedia, online gaming, financial analysis, security, cloud networking, Web 2.0 and other applications.
BLADE used the marketing slogan "Rackonomics" – an economical approach for provisioning essential server, storage and networking. BLADE's marketing associated themselves with blade servers.
BLADE's RackSwitch was a data center switch with Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections.
The RackSwitch product family was promoted as extending benefits of virtual machine from server computers to the network.
RackSwitch was the only switch designed for IBM's iDataPlex, a custom-configured rack system featuring cooling and efficiency to address I/O-intensive applications and cloud computing.
BLADE RackSwitch products included: RackSwitch G8100 and G8124 10G low latency Switches and RackSwitch G8000 1-10G aggregation switch.
BLADE's embedded Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switches are available for IBM BladeCenter, HP BladeSystem, NEC SIGMABLADE and Verari BladeSwitch to consolidate server I/O, enable network virtualization, and reduce data center complexity by adding network intelligence within the blade server chassis.
BLADE's switch modules for IBM:

BNT 10-port 10G Ethernet Switch Module

BNT 6-port 10G Ethernet Switch Module

BNT 1/10Gb Uplink Ethernet Switch Module

BNT Layer 2-7 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module

BNT Layer 2/3 Copper Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module

BNT Layer 2/3 Fiber Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module
BLADE's switch modules for HP BladeSystem include:

HP 10Gb Ethernet BL-c Switch

HP 1:10Gb Ethernet BL-c Switch

HP GbE2c Layer 2/3 Ethernet Blade Switch

HP GbE2c Ethernet Blade Switch
BLADE's switch modules for NEC SIGMABLADE include:

NEC 1Gb Intelligent L2 Switch

NEC 1Gb Intelligent L3 Switch

NEC 10Gb Intelligent L3 Switch
Network management and virtualization software included SmartConnect with VMready, and BLADE Harmony Manager.
BLADEHarmony professional services offered integration of systems, software, services and support for rack-level server environments.
BLADE had agreements with the vendors: HP, IBM, NEC and Juniper Networks.