SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BNT), the leading provider of network switching infrastructure for blade servers, announced that during 2007 the company grew its 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) business by more than 470 percent and increased its installed base by more than 50 percent over the past four years combined. Based on the strength of its 2007 shipments of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet embedded blade server switches, BLADE has now shipped more than 150,000 blade switches.

BLADE has emerged as the leading supplier of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade switches. This comes at a time when blade servers are taking market share from conventional rackmount servers; the Ethernet switch market is experiencing solid growth; and the 10GE market is poised to grow rapidly across the next three years.

According to IDC, blade servers are the fastest-growing sector of the overall server market, with revenues that surpassed $1 billion for the first time in a single quarter and for the first time in 2007 accounted for 10 percent of all servers shipped.¹ According to IDC’s Network Equipment QView, 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch ports grew 58 percent from 2006 to reach $2 billion in 2007. BLADE’s 10GE blade switches for IBM BladeCenter and HP BladeSystem, priced at well below $1,000 per port, are leading the way.

BLADE has partnered with the world’s leading providers of blade servers—HP, IBM and NEC—to deliver the essential Ethernet networking required for interoperability with existing business and telco networks and for use in High Performance Computing (HPC), IP SAN storage, Video on Demand (VoD) and other I/O-intensive environments. For the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market, BLADE has joined with blade server system vendors to create solutions with integrated networking to simplify the IT environments for these businesses.

“Our industry-leading focus on blade network infrastructures—combined with our rich software portfolio, superior price/performance, ‘green blade’ switches and value-added OEM business model—has translated into our market-leading position,” said Vikram Mehta, President and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies. “I want to thank our customers, business partners, suppliers and employees for helping us become the most trusted name in blade server networking and the leading supplier of 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade switches.”

Blade Network Technologies Inc.