The HP BladeSystem C-Class is the company's latest attempt at designing a chassis for thin blade servers, which are changing the way enterprise customers think about using their data centers, said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP's Technology Solutions Group.

"This is a big announcement that comes in a very small package," Livermore said as she unveiled the new chassis.

The HP BladeSystem 7000c Enclosure fits into standard server racks, taking up 17.5 inches of vertical rack slots, or 10U, with room for 16 different server or storage blades.

The new HP blades come with improvements in manageability, heat control and virtualization, said Paul Miller, HP's vice president of marketing for industry standard servers.