and show that they are not just another tin shifter trying to lock you into their line of overpriced boxes, like they have with their switch chassis, oh, wait, never mind....

If some of the smarter players like Rackable or Verari sign up and start shipping standard blades and chassis that would likely suck in Dell to stay in the game for the serious customers (who don't buy blades because the benefits are not there at current prices) and this might just start the slide.

It'd create a support nightmare, HP blade centre filled with IBM and Dell blades or any combination of the above?

Good luck getting support with that one mate!

I can imagine the conversations now, all the helpdesks laughing up their sleeves at you, throwing dice to see which other vendor to blame this time!

On the other hand, if the bean counters get wind of this, damn, we're all screwed.

Paris, really screwed.

Blades don't really come at a premium either, typically we see the price point where it becomes more economical to deploy blades (just on upfront costs) is at about 6-8 servers, and thats not counting the additional benefits you get such as more efficient power and cable management.

So its not just for the corperate space either. A standard in this area would also diffuse innovation and each vendors ability to compete and differentiate themselves in the market. What next all Apps have to be deployed on Windows?

is to sell something that has proprietary lock-in on the design, which in turn means less competition and ipso facto,higher margins on the sale for the vendor.

Why do you think that HP was pushing blades so hard? They couldn't make sufficient margin off the rack dense product alone in the face of stiff competition from Dell.

Similarly, IBM is about 40% higher than the Dell or HP equivalent on their blades (your street pricing may vary) because of the perception of IBM as the blade standard and the speed to which the blue adherents signed up for more IBM tin.