While sales of blade servers continue to rise, there remains debate over the efficiency of these slim systems in various data center settings. I think it’s safe to say that if you’re going to deploy more than just a handful of blades you’ll be getting your money’s worth, especially with blade servers becoming more powerful and more energy efficient.

IDC calls blades a growth driver in the volume server market and says blades should account for about 10% of server sales this year. By 2010, enterprise buyers will spend about $11 billion on blades, accounting for about a quarter of the server market.

With more enterprise buyers mulling blades, it’s not surprising to see the vendors moving from just selling the hardware to offering add-on services designed to help put some cost and technology perspective around the systems.

HP last week announced the HP Proactive BladeSystem Service, which links customers with HP blade experts. The idea behind the service is to give customers a real-life, on-site helping hand when it comes to blade deployments.

HP executives say their experts will help customers with areas such as blades and power and cooling, blades and consolidation and blades and virtualization. Read newsletters on blades and virtualization here and here.

The HP Proactive BladeSystem Service costs $33,000 for a year and during that year enterprise buyers will have a direct line to HP and its resources. Customers will get an onsite account manager who will work with the IT department to continually evaluate and make recommendations regarding the best use of blades and associated management tools, HP says.

The service, which covers HP BladeSytem blade servers, HP StorageWorks blades, blade enclosures, blade networking and storage-area network devices, as well as HP management software, is available 24x7.

The HP Proactive BladeSystem Service is available now. Get more detail on the service here.