How midsize businesses can addresses inherent challenges in today's competitive market by minimizing both costs and risk.

The following article is an extract from the white paper "ITG Executive Summary: Value Proposition for IBM Power Systems Servers and IBM i: Minimizing Costs and Risks for Midsize Businesses" available for download free from the MC White Paper Center.

The challenges faced by midsize businesses remain daunting. Weak markets, competitive pressures, cost-reduction mandates, and demands for greater operating efficiency and productivity are the norm in most industries. In many, globalization continues.

Information technology has become central to meeting these challenges. Even relatively small organizations now have enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), e-commerce, and other state-of-the-art systems. The number of "must have" solutions continues to expand.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that a plethora of new capabilities has become available to midsize businesses. The bad news is that new technologies can significantly increase the complexities with which organizations must deal. Solution value may be degraded, IT costs may escalate, and risks of business disruption may increase. Current economic conditions do not argue in favor of such strategies.

Excessive complexity has undermined the IT strategies of many large organizations. In a midsize business with limited resources and technical skills, the impact may be a great deal more serious.

How can this be avoided? One option is to employ IBM i 7.1 on latest-generation POWER7-based systems. These offer industry-leading integration and optimization across all components of hardware and software stacks. More than any other platform available today, they offer midsize users the benefits of advanced technology while minimizing costs, complexities, and risks.

Three-Year Infrastructure Costs

The cost advantages of POWER7-based systems and IBM i 7.1 may be illustrated by comparing costs for server infrastructures in four midsize businesses with $200 million to $1.3 billion in sales, and 500 to 4,500 employees.

Overall three-year costs for use of POWER7-based systems and IBM i 7.1 average 42 percent less than for x86 servers with Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server, and 56 percent less than for x86 servers with Linux and Oracle databases.

Three-year costs include hardware acquisition and maintenance; license and support costs for operating systems, databases, and other systems software; personnel costs for system and database administration; and facilities (primarily energy) costs.

Comparisons are between latest-generation versions of all platforms. These include IBM Power 720, 730, and 740 systems with IBM i 7.1 and PowerVM virtualization; and x86 servers based on Intel 7500 and 5600 series (Nehalem EX) processors with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, or Linux and Oracle Database 11g. VMware ESX 4 virtualization is employed with Windows and Linux servers.

Costs for use of POWER7-based systems and IBM i 7.1 are lower across the board. For example, initial acquisition costs for hardware and software licenses average 18 percent less than for x86 servers with Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server, and 43 percent less than for x86 servers with Linux and Oracle databases.

Want to learn more? Download the white paper "ITG Executive Summary: Value Proposition for IBM Power Systems Servers and IBM i: Minimizing Costs and Risks for Midsize Businesses" free from the MC White Paper Center.