Computer Reseller News is reporting that analyst firm iSuppli found that blade server sales appear to be on the rise.   iSuppli stated that 21.6 percent of all servers sold in 2011 are going to be blade servers, a huge bump when compared to the percentage of blade servers sold in 2006 - 7.9 percent.  CRN writes:

Server consolidation, virtualization, and power savings are leading to a boom in blade server sales over the next four years, according to a report published by iSuppli. Solution providers, however, are already taking advantage of new blade servers to solve customer infrastructure issues.

The El Segundo, Calif.-based analyst firm on Thursday published a report in which it estimated that blade server shipments will reach 2.4 million units in 2011, up from 620,000 units sold in 2006 and this year's estimated 856,000 units, for an overall cumulative annual growth rate of 31.5 percent.

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The growth is being driven by the growing enthusiasm for server virtualization and consolidation, as well as the adoption of technologies such as multi-core and low-power processors.

Yet despite the growth in sales, iSuppli estimates that the average selling price will fall an average of only 3 percent during that time, hitting $3,605 dollars in 2011, down from $4,189 last year and $3,967 this year.

The reason, said iSuppli, stems from the fact that customers tend to find new and ever more complex ways to consume increased computing power, and will find that blade servers will lead them to run more demanding applications and operating systems, keeping the servers from becoming commodity products.

Solution providers are already seeing a spike in growth of blade server sales, and expect this growth to continue unabated for the foreseeable future.

Read the entire CRN article, here.