IBM today announced an intelligent blade server that incorporates deep packet inspection (DPI) technology from CloudShield to enable service providers to protect their data center infrastructure, manage network traffic and develop new services.

The new blade for IBM’s Blade Center is the result of a 20-month collaboration between the two companies that was driven by a large service provider customer, said Bill Scull, vice president of marketing at CloudShield. The IBM BladeCenter PN41 is a key component of IBM’s strategy to offer telecom service providers an integrated hardware, software and services framework to deliver new services and do so securely, moving their Blade Centers into what has been the realm of specialized Central Office equipment. The IBM Telecom Integrated Solution for Security also includes IBM Proventia Intrusion Prevention and IBM Tivoli Security Operations Manager.

“Service providers hate the one-problem, one-appliance approach to things,” Scull said. “Each appliance requires its own management interface, and that approach doesn’t scale – it’s not economic. A big part of the reason we got together and collaborated was that a mutual customer wanted us to. Service providers want to build next-generation networks on Blade Centers – they are very excited about one chassis.”

CloudShield also is announcing a development environment that runs on top of the blade to enable third-party developers and service providers themselves to develop new services.

“What’s interesting about what CloudShield and IBM are doing is that they are making it openly architected to enable partnerships with third-party providers to make new services,” said Yankee Group analyst David Vorhaus. “To this point, the service provider community has been slow to act. I think that could change as we see DPI providers strike up partnerships proactively with third-party providers to do things like managed security services, tying the technology directly to some new services as opposed to saying to service providers, here’s this great new tool, now go figure out what to do with it.”