IBM, in collaboration with Intel, has made available the design specifications for the IBM eServer BladeCenter platform. The specifications allow hardware vendors to more easily create BladeCenter compatible products and participate in the rapidly growing blade-server segment.

The design specifications are intended to help hardware vendors develop and build BladeCenter compatible networking switches, adapter cards, and appliance and communications blades for enterprise networks. BladeCenter integrates storage, servers and networking in a single chassis to provide customers with a single point of server management and provisioning.

"Customers have made it clear that they desire the ability to use best-of- breed products that are easily integrated and managed," said Jeff Benck, vice president, IBM eServer BladeCenter. "The opening of the BladeCenter specifications continues Intel and IBM's commitment to industry collaboration and to delivering the value, flexibility and choice that customers expect from blade servers."

IBM and Intel will provide technical support to assist product development, including design guidelines and hands-on, fee-based support from IBM's Engineering & Technology Services organization. The specifications are available with royalty-free licenses to IBM or Intel technology. By making the specifications more broadly available, IBM and Intel are helping to build an ecosystem of products that deliver value, flexibility and choice for customers deploying the IBM eServer BladeCenter and Intel's OEM blade server platform.

"Third party hardware vendors have been looking for ways to participate in the rapidly growing server blade market," said Jeff Richardson, general manager, enterprise products and services division at Intel. "The public availability of the design specifications provides hardware vendors access to the blades serviced by the BladeCenter platform as well as supporting IBM and Intel's collaboration effort to establish a broader portfolio of third party value-add products."

Enterprise networking vendors can now develop products compliant with the BladeCenter architecture. This will help ensure that future BladeCenter-based deployments will seamlessly integrate into enterprise customer's IT infrastructure. In addition, telecommunications vendors can now obtain the specifications for IBM's eServer BladeCenterT designed for dense, compute- intensive server platforms, enabling a common infrastructure between a carrier's enterprise and IT infrastructure. This will complement the industry- standards-based AdvancedTCA (ATCA) specification for platforms used throughout the service-provider public-network infrastructure.