Blade computing is becoming a more important part of the IT Director’s arsenal. Whilst often seen as a way of providing ‘servers in a different form factor’, blade computing in fact offers significant benefits in flexibility and responsiveness to business needs as well as big savings in power, cooling and floor space. This paper looks at the particular challenges in public sector IT – the need to find efficiency savings at the same time as offering better service to citizens – and discusses the particular circumstances in which blade computing will be right for the public sector IT manager.