In the next six months, IBM will be selling a new BladeCenter system that targets small and midsize businesses. Blade servers have generally been designed for large enterprises since they were introduced. IBMs BladeCenter S system plans to change that and increase IBMs reach into a much broader space through features such as a six-blade chassis system and on-board storage and switch options. The new blade, which will arrive in the fourth quarter of 2007, gives small businesses the option of plugging the system into a standard wall socket and it offers management tools for fast installations. To reach small business owners, IBM executives are planning to leverage their partners developed through IBMs Blade.org initiative in addition to IBMs PartnerWorld program for its channel partners. In the expanding blade market, which was valued at $768 million for the first quarter of 2007, IBM has been in a heated rivalry with its main competitor, Hewlett-Packard, with its c-Class BladeSystem. IBM and HP together dominate 75 percent of the blade market, yet the market got more competitive with the recent entry of Sun Microsystems. Sun could be a fierce competitor because its Blade 6000 Modular System is a solution that offers a choice of Intel Advanced Micro Devices or Ultra-SPARC processors in the same chassis. Later this year, competition will increase as Dell will offer its own new blade architecture. Charles King, analyst at Pund-IT Research, said that IBM is the first to offer a blade specifically designed for small and midsize markets at a time when IBM, HP, and Dell have all been pursuing small and midsize business customers. At the same time, IBM has kept its enterprise customers in mind. IBMs blade servers will support both AMD and Intel processors in addition to IBMs own Power architecture.