There is a phrase I learned while in Texas called “lipsticking a pig." It's the art of making something out to be a lot better than it really is.
With this in mind, I was to read the prepared remarks from IBM’s latest earnings release. IBM’s Systems and Technology business declined by -20% year on year, with the System x business down -32% and Blades down -27%. IBM did provide some explanation for this year over year drop of almost one third by saying customers were moving to mainframes.
"System x server revenue declined 32 percent year to year, with blades down 27 percent. This reflects a significant slowdown in the x86 market, as customers are virtualizing and consolidating workloads into more efficient platforms such as POWER and mainframe." *
There's only one problem: the System z (Mainframes) saw a decline of -6% so somehow the numbers do not quite add up. I would like to offer an alternative view on IBM’s decline in blades business. Take a look at the chart below of blade revenue market share taken from IDC’s latest Server Tracker in CQ308 and you can make your own conclusions: 
*http://www.ibm.com/investor/4q08/presentation/4q08prepared.pdf
Posted
01-27-2009 7:11 PM
by
robert.cashman@hp.com