IBM’s New Systems Accelerate Smarter Computing
Big Blue introduces new or enhanced servers, storage products to help businesses make better decisions, operate more efficiently.
Note: TDWI's editors carefully choose vendor-issued press releases about new or upgraded products and services. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key features but make no claims as to the accuracy of the vendor's statements.
In the largest update to its systems portfolio this year, IBM today announced 55 new and updated server and storage technologies that can help clients gain actionable insights from data, increase IT capacity, and deliver new services faster to create profitable business opportunities.
Some of the new and enhanced offerings include affordable business analytics systems.
As the world's increasing demand for data and services puts a strain on IT resources, organizations become trapped in a vicious cycle in which a rigid IT infrastructure and lack of trusted data leads to reactive or risky decision making. Attempts to overcome these challenges through additional IT investments often result in a more sprawling and costly infrastructure.
The new offerings address these challenges with smarter computing technologies for business analytics, integrated storage, optimized systems and virtualized data centers.
Designed for Data
Companies that handle vast amounts of information need to be able to analyze that data to make better business decisions in real time. IBM is delivering new entry-level business analytics systems, accelerated database analytics, and expanded data storage options. Highlights include:
IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator incorporates the Netezza data warehouse appliance into the IBM zEnterprise System for faster analytic responses. The blending of Netezza and System z technologies enables the merging of online transaction processing (OLTP) systems, which facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications typically for data entry and retrieval transaction processing, with analytics into a single platform for operational business analytics. The appliance plugs into IBM DB2 for z/OS database on zEnterprise 196 (or z114) and is designed to speed response time for a wide variety of intensive analytics, which ultimately can provide faster business analysis. At a time when organizations are demanding access to customer purchase histories, customer behaviors and real time sales trends, IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator helps clients sift through this massive amount of data and make the information relevant and actionable in a timelier manner.
IBM Smart Analytics System 9700 and IBM Smart Analytics System 9710 utilize innovative technologies to deliver an end-to-end data warehouse and business intelligence solution on IBM zEnterprise System. The new systems can support a data distribution hub, transactional analysis platforms and modernized reporting systems, or provide a framework for comprehensive predictive analytics. IBM clients can now build a mainframe-based operational business analytics solution at an entry-level price.
IBM POWER7 processor-based IBM Smart Analytics System 7710 and x86 processor-based IBM Smart Analytics System 5710 are single server, all-in-one systems that deliver business analytics and reporting services faster and at a lower cost than previous IBM integrated solutions. Engineered for the rapid deployment of business-ready solutions in days and not months, they offer a breadth of capabilities including business intelligence reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining, cubing services and text analytics.
IBM Storwize V7000 Unified midrange disk system brings efficiency and simplicity to data storage with file and block storage located on the same system with a world-class graphical user interface. It provides automatic policy-driven movement of files to the desired drive type to help manage costs and simplify administration, the ability to either scale within a system or scale out by clustering two systems together, and enhanced remote mirroring options.
IBM System Storage DS8000 Release 6.2 enterprise disk systems introduce greater performance and improved capacity optimization capabilities that allow organizations to manage diverse workloads efficiently and automatically without administrator involvement. Easy Tier enhancements include automated data migration across three-tiers of storage, as well as automated data rebalancing within a single tier, which can help clients improve performance where and when it's needed. Moreover, with only two parameters to set, Easy Tier is easy to set up and manage.
IBM XIV Storage System Gen3 enterprise disk system was introduced in July with an advanced hardware upgrade that can improve performance for the most demanding workloads. Now, IBM is adding support for 3TB disk drives that increase capacity by 50 percent in the same physical footprint and enable an increase in usable capacity of up to 243TB per rack (based on IBM internal measurements). IBM is offering several other innovations such as the IBM XIV Mobile Dashboard, an Apple iPad application available at no cost that enables XIV system status to be monitored from anywhere.
For more information on IBM Smarter Computing, visit www.ibm.com/smartercomputing.