Blade servers took off first in 1999 and 2000 with a number of startups, many of which have fallen by the wayside. Two survivors from that era are Egenera of Marlborough, Mass., and RLX Technologies in Houston. Egenera sells high-end servers to large enterprises, and RLX provides products for smaller data centers. In late 2001, Hewlett-Packard introduced its "Powerbar," and in 2002, its ProLiant line. Then, Compaq came along with the QuickBlade. Also in 2002, Dell announced PowerEdge, and IBM unveiled BladeCenter. The Sun Fire Blade Platform arrived in early 2003. Today, there's a host of vendors. According to IMEX Research, growth has been steady and will continue.