Blade.org Announces Webinar Series Focusing on Emerging Trends and Best Practices in the Data Center

PISCATAWAY, NJ--(Marketwire - November 16, 2009) - Blade.org, a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of blade server solutions, announces the formation of Blade.org Webinar Series, focusing on emerging trends and best practices affecting today's data center. Open to Blade.org members and non-members alike, the webinar series offers IT professionals a glimpse into strategies that can successfully reduce their costs, improve efficiencies and maximize their Blade investment in the workplace.

"Feedback from customers who attended the previous webinar (server virtualization) has been very positive. Their high marks for the technical content and healthy interaction with panel members has shaped the format and content for this timely update on network convergence," said Brent Mosbrook, Chair of the Blade.org Solutions Committee.

Building off this momentum, the next webinar will take place on Thursday, 3 December 2009 at 1:00 pm EST and will cover the hot topic of Network Convergence in the data center. This webinar will address how this technology can be deployed in bladed environments, saving power, time, and cost. I/O virtualization is another potential solution that will be explored to reduce I/O bottlenecks and speed the migration towards converged networks.

Presenting will be Blade.org members BLADE Network Technologies, IBM, Virtensys, and Emulex, who will also act as emcee for the event. The presenters will provide attendees with valued insight on the following topics:

--  Savings - Attendees will acquire tips on how to save money, power, and
    time by consolidating into a single converged Ethernet fabric, and will
    also learn how to improve system performance by upgrading to 10G with
    higher bandwidth and lower latency.
--  Convergence and Blades - Become better acquainted with the latest
    updates on convergence technology and rollouts for bladed environments.
    Attendees will also learn how convergence can help you with existing data
    center struggles (eg. power, server sprawl, VM performance, cost,
    management integration, etc).
--  New Products - Gain insight into why network convergence is relevant
    to bladed environments, the benefits it offers in terms of savings at the
    chassis level, and learn about some newly released products which deliver
    upon the converged network vision.
--  I/O Virtualization - With data centers rapidly adopting server
    virtualization in the pursuit of increased utilization, efficiency and
    manageability, server I/O has become a critical bottleneck. Attendees will
    learn how I/O virtualization solves the I/O bottleneck problems by lowering
    the I/O costs and power consumption and by speeding the migration towards
    converged networks.
    

The webinar format features a panel discussion where attendees will be able to ask questions of the subject matter experts. Subsequent webinars will take place in regular intervals. Upcoming topics will include storage consolidation, as well as an update on network convergence rollout. To register for this webinar, please visit: http://www.blade.org/webinar_netconv.cfm.

About Blade.org

Blade.org is a collaborative vendor and end-user community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of blade server solutions. The organization provides leadership to the blade market and fosters a thriving industry ecosystem focused on delivering valuable solutions to blade computing customers. More information is available at www.blade.org.

Contact Information: Media Contact Lisa Galish Marketing Committee Chair galish@us.ibm.com (919) 486-2280 Jeff Pane Marketing Coordinator jeff@blade.org (732) 465-6605