Egenera was founded to develop and bring to market a groundbreaking product for server farms, aimed at resolving many of the bottleneck and scalability problems found in today's data centers, large enterprises, and service providers. The BladeFrame houses 96 server-class processors in an easy-to-use system with the same footprint as existing server racks containing half that number.

The main factor driving the design of the system was the quest for extremely high processor density. Packing more processors per square inch of footprint means more heat buildup, more weight on the structure, and less space available for components and connections, which posed many engineering challenges. Egenera required that each of the thin processor modules - called ""blades"" in industry jargon—did not share any functional components with each other to avoid a single point of failure, so each of the modules had to contain its own cooling system and power supply. The modules also had to be "hot-pluggable" without access to the back of the rack by means of a "blindmate" connection. The BladeFrame industrial design expresses power and density, while conveying ease of use and installation. The elegant monolithic architectural appearance of the system avoids any reference to the ubiquitous 19" rack detailing. This is accentuated via a thin, vertical, glass door, which covers the blade inject-eject levers and wire management channel while also offering security. Visually the door serves to break the horizontal massing created by the multiple thin-blade units. Being clear, the door presents the eject levers and a glowing vertical blue strip behind.

The BladeFrame went from concept to production within a year and generated three patent applications.