This IDC study reviews the worldwide and U.S. blade server market in 2005 and provides a 2006?2010 forecast for this market segment. In addition to 2005 vendor shares, historical and forecast data is provided by region, socket capability, and operating system.

"In its fourth year since market introduction, the blade server segment surpassed $2 billion in customer revenue for 2005," said Jed Scaramella, research analyst, Enterprise Servers. "When compared on a similar adoption timeline, this performance matches that of rack-optimized servers, which are the form factor of choice today. IDC believes blade servers will continue to be the growth area in the overall server market."