IBM today announced that its clients around the world such as the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation, Tricon Geophysics and the United States Bowling Congress are building new, more dynamic infrastructures to help reduce costs, improve service and manage risk. The company also announced additional new dynamic infrastructure products and services. As a result, clients will be better able to respond to and manage challenges presented by today's globally integrated world.
Clients including Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation, Tricon Geophysics and the United States Bowling Congress are working with IBM to develop smarter, more intelligent infrastructures that help reduce costs and improve services they provide to their customers. The infrastructure technology helps clients manage and gain insight from an increasing number of things in their physical infrastructure that are being instrumented with intelligent sensors; analyze vast amounts of information; and become more "green" and cost efficient.
IDC estimates the market opportunity for the software, servers, technologies, and services to manage the world's converged IT and physical infrastructure to be $122 billion by 2012.
New dynamic infrastructure clients:
The Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation (THSRC) is using IBM software connected to intelligent sensors to manage maintenance and logistical data for the revolutionary high-speed rail network that runs along the west coast of Taiwan. These sensors identify maintenance issues and track train locations to make sure hundreds of trains carrying passengers between the south and the north are safe and on time. As a result, THSRC is able to greatly improve its customer service. The express trains are capable of traveling at up to 186 miles per hour (300 km/hr), meaning travel between Taipei City and Kaohsiung City is only roughly 90 minutes as opposed to the 4.5 hours by conventional rail. Using IBM software for insight into assets, their conditions and work processes, and for better planning and control, has helped THSRC maintain an average punctuality rate of 99.15 percent.
Tricon Geophysics, Venezuela's leading provider of seismic data processing and interpretation services for oil and gas companies is using an IBM iDataPlex system running Red Hat Linux for the seismic data collation, processing and migration needed for oil and gas exploration and production. This highly dynamic infrastructure based on IBM's iDataPlex enables Tricon to analyze 25 times more seismic data in the same time as compared to existing systems from an area of approximately 2500 square kilometers (close to 1000 square miles) and improve energy efficiency by 40 percent, while also reducing operating and cooling costs. Because the simulation of 3-D seismic data requires several compilations before it can be processed by standard petro-technical applications, the company also implemented an IBM System x3950 server running the Red Hat Linux operating system to pre-process seismic data. This capability gives Tricon a unique competitive advantage to conduct seismic analysis for oil and gas companies covering larger areas in a shorter time, cost effectively aided by energy efficiency and higher computing densities.
The United States Bowling Congress is the national governing body for the sport of bowling, serving more than 2.5 million adult and youth members. Recently, USBC consolidated its corporate data center on IBM POWER servers and blades using IBM PowerVM virtualization software. It also uses intelligent sensor technology to manage power utilization to reduce cooling and electricity costs in its data center. By using intelligent sensors, USBC can monitor data center activity and automatically adjust to optimize temperature and humidity. This results in a nearly 50 percent reduction in cooling cost and eliminates more than five tons of carbon emissions annually. This new consolidated blade server-based data center helps to run the world's largest participatory sporting event, the USBC Open Championships and allows all the entry information, scheduling and results to be updated and accessed in real time during the tournament's 140-day run.
New dynamic infrastructure products and services:
To help clients build and manage more dynamic infrastructures, IBM is further expanding its portfolio of offerings by introducing a range of new products and services for mid-size and enterprise clients.
New offerings designed to help clients build more flexible and dynamic infrastructures
A new consulting service -- the IT Optimization Business Value Roadmap -- is designed to help clients with multiple information technology (IT) projects planned to re-evaluate priorities and shift resources to fewer projects in today's existing economic environment. The service helps clients execute a targeted optimization plan that can save between 20-40 percent in costs, and prioritize and map future IT projects based on key business priorities.
The IBM Service Management Center for Cloud Computing, which now includes new IBM Tivoli Identity and Access Assurance, IBM Tivoli Data and Application Security, and IBM Tivoli Security Management for z/OS, for Cloud environments.
Two new System x appliances for system and application monitoring and service request management: IBM Tivoli Foundations Application Manager and IBM Tivoli Foundations Service Manager are suited for small and mid-sized clients looking to reduce costs, manage risks, and improve their service quality.
New infrastructure offerings designed to help clients reduce costs, become more green
IBM announced at the COMMON user group meeting in Reno, Nev., the industry's first virtualization software capabilities, IBM PowerVM Active Memory Sharing that allows memory to automatically flow from one virtual server--or "logical partition"--to another for increased utilization and flexibility of memory usage. Using this software, memory can be pooled and automatically adjusted to meet fluctuating workload demands.
New Power 520 and 550 servers use 4.7GHz and the world's fastest 5.0GHz POWER6 processor respectively, and allow companies to save up to 91 percent in energy usage and reduce floor space by 92 percent. (2)
The new BladeCenter JS23 and JS43 are the premier blades for 64-bit applications on i, AIX or Linux operating systems. Using a 4.2 GHz POWER6 processor they deliver performance and scalability improvements at compelling prices. For example, a BladeCenter JS23 with four cores delivers twice the performance of an HP 860c Itanium blade according to industry benchmarks. (1)
Continuing IBM's commitment to a new generation of leadership in x86 technology built on the 4th generation IBM X-ArchitectureTM, and building on the recently announced System x racks, blades and iDataPlex products, today's announcement includes two new 2-socket tower servers, System x3400 M2 and x3500 M2. These offerings help clients to significantly reduce cost with energy efficiency, including all new thermal designs, new voltage regulators and higher integration on the board to simplify power distribution and reduce distribution loss. This includes new, greater than 92 percent efficiency power and provides up to 60 percent reduction in power when idle. It also provides up to 25 percent reduction when fully utilized vs. the previous generation. As a result, energy savings can reach up to 95 percent compared to previous generations of x86 servers.
The new technology found in both servers features new systems management tools such as Integrated Management Module, Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), Systems Director and Tools Center, helping customers establish a virtual infrastructure with less hardware. In fact, clients can reach greater than 11:1 consolidation from 2005 generation x86 servers when transitioning to IBM HS22 blades, and an estimated 9:1 consolidation when transitioning to x3650 M2 servers.
Also debuting is the Cluster 1350, a fully integrated solution designed to increase high-performance computing needs in a broad-range of application areas, while reducing overall power and cooling costs by up to 50 percent.
To support clients in their energy initiatives, IBM has designed a prescriptive Energy Management Adoption Model to provide clients with concrete steps to improve the energy efficiency of their infrastructure. The model covers the entire infrastructure including IT, Facilities/Property and other business assets. It defines 4 stages of adoption including discovery, manage, optimize and report with well defined projects that leverage available capabilities to provide quick ROI while delivering larger energy savings over time. As part of this Model, IBM also announced enhancements to its energy management portfolio including enhanced integration between IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management and Tivoli Business Service Manager, enable unified energy management of IT and non-IT infrastructure assets, consolidating energy information across a facility into a customizable energy dashboard and a free 60 day trial of IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management.
New offerings to help manage, analyze, store, secure staggering amounts of information
New risk management and business intelligence software for System z -- ACI Proactive Risk Manager (PRM) for System z -- designed to handle high-volume fraud assessments as part of the authorization process to detect whether a transaction is approved or denied, without impacting legitimate credit card, check or debit card transactions.
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for Linux on System z includes enhancements to get fast and easy access to the most up-to-date business information from any location on handheld devices such as BlackBerrys.
A new version of the IBM System Storage DS5000 that will include self-encrypting disk technology for mid-market clients. Data is automatically protected against unauthorized access, eliminating the costs associated with data exposure, while helping clients address regulatory requirements. Other enhancements include faster, 8-Gbps adapters to improve efficiency and increase performance, along with greater capacity of up to 448 disk drives in a single system to provide lower total cost of ownership.
A new version of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center delivers new performance analytics technology and customization features that enable IT administrators to manage large-scale storage environments while increasing overall system performance, reducing management complexities, and improving system availability. The new analytics technology helps identify hot spots for problem determination and quick tuning to improve performance and storage utilization in order to help clients increase service levels and improve efficiency. Tivoli Storage Productivity Center also delivers expanded heterogeneous platform support, advanced reporting, and security features for multi-vendor storage environments.
New networking offerings
IBM today announced new hardware, software and services to help improve networking connectivity for greater infrastructure efficiency. Building on its extensive experience in networking, IBM is introducing a new service offering, IBM Networking, Strategy, Optimization and Implementation Services for consolidation and virtualization.
Also as part of today's networking news, IBM is increasing the range of the choices it offers for network connectivity, beginning with an expansion of its OEM agreement with Brocade to introduce a family of IBM-branded Ethernet switches and routers. This OEM network equipment from Brocade position IBM to provide customers with a more complete set of offerings for emerging dynamic data centers. Brocade has been a strategic IBM supplier for Storage Area Network products and this new offering adds a set of 1G and 10G Ethernet switches and routers to that portfolio. These complement IBM's current networking offerings, such as those from long-time strategic networking supplier Cisco that IBM continues to work with on a global basis to expand its strong relationship. IBM has also strengthened its collaboration with Juniper Networks, Inc. In February, the two companies demonstrated hybrid public-private cloud capabilities. IBM and Juniper continue to explore opportunities to further expand the relationship.
As part of today's announcement IBM also introduced financing options to help enterprises specifically acquire IBM's new line of dynamic infrastructure products and services.
For additional information visit www.ibm.com/dynamicinfrastructure.
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