As Cisco Enters Blade Server Market, Dell Preps Launch of New Product

Dell Product Group announced plans to release a new line of blade servers built around virtualization when Intel launches its next iteration of Nehalem (Intel processor microarchitecture) processors. Dell will announce its product line after the Nehalem-EP chip line is released. Cisco's entrance into the blade server market, with a project entitled "Project California", will start with a focus also on virtualization.

**Virtualization is the use of software to mask server resources, (ie. number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems) from server users.

**The first Nehalem processor was released on the 18th of November 2008 (Tokyo) and the 17th of November 2008 in the US.