Looking at the demand side, considering the global economic recovery will not be especially strong in 2002, and due to uncertainty regarding the outlook for the information industry, lower IT expenditures will result in fewer server sales worldwide.  On the supply side, the present lack of unified specifications for blade servers will slow the spread of this product. Over the short term, it will be difficult for blade servers to attract new or replacement purchasers from the corporate sector. At this point in time, server vendors' release of a product with which corporations are unfamiliar will have difficulty snatching an increased market share.

As price competition heats up, forcing server profit margins down, server vendors will be able to make up for the lost profits through the management software sold with blade servers. Additionally, the capacity-on-demand advantage of this product, which allows users to add blades as needed rather than replacing the entire machine, will likely further boost sales. As the economy begins to gradually recover and corporations look to save physical space, in the long term, blades will replace bulky pedestal servers, and compete on the same level as rack mount servers.