Despite the fact that we are living in the cloud era, in my opinion, we still need hardware in our own datacenters. I believe that the hybrid cloud is the future, and we are going to keep buying hardware adequate for this solution, even more so in third-world countries, where computing power needs are not as big. In my opinion, modular hardware technology is disappearing. There is a tendency to buy standalone servers that are much cheaper and offer similar or better performance. IBM replaced the BladeCenter line with the Flex Chassis. However, that Flex system is way more expensive than the BladeCenter, and it doesn’t sell as well as Blades. My recommendation is, if you have the money and you have significant experience with modular servers, go for the IBM Flex System Chassis.