Systems/Enterprise:
IBM UNVEILS NEW ON DEMAND
OFFERINGS
IBM has unveiled a new set of offerings as part of its on demand operating
environment designed to link customer business objectives and computing
resources.
These new technologies and delivery options enable companies to drive down
costs, increase organizational productivity and enable more flexible business
operations.
Companies increasingly want to fund growth by streamlining their
infrastructure and dynamically link business process with the allocation of IT
resources. Frequently today, companies find themselves with IT systems that
have become overgrown, disjointed and under utilized. As a result, the
associated costs have become prohibitive and a barrier to growth.
A suite of new offerings that simplify the way in which customers can
acquire
capabilities to support their business transformation are being unveiled at a
major industry analyst event hosted by IBM. They include:
- The IBM TotalStorage Virtualization family of products is designed to help
customers reduce the complexity and management of data in a network.
Virtualization provides a single, consolidated point of management, boosting
utilization and improving productivity of IT resources. The new products are
intended to make it more cost-effective and easier for businesses to run and
administer storage environments which house critical customer and financial
information.
- IBM Server Allocation for WebSphere Application Server which applies grid
computing capabilities to help companies manage business applications, which
run on different servers and have different usage patterns, as a single
environment able to adapt automatically to sudden change. Developed by IBM
Software, Systems Group and Research, the IBM Adaptive Server Allocation for
Wepshere Application Server will become available to WebSphere customers later
this quarter and will feature IBM Tivoli's systems management capabilities in
the second half of 2003.
- IBM Web Server Provisioning based on IBM's autonomic computing strategy
allows customers to switch or add servers to adjust capacity immediately,
streamlining IT operations, optimizing resources, and lowering management
costs. The solution automatically configures all the necessary software and
hardware resources in a given environment, provisioning a server and balancing
the load in minutes. Customers can switch or add a Blade Center server to
increase capacity immediately, streamlining IT operations, optimizing
resources, and lowering management costs. The solution, available in the third
quarter, automatically configures hardware and software -- such as HTTP or Web
application servers -- in a given environment, provisioning the server
resources based on utilization.
New Financial and Delivery Offerings
- Open Infrastructure Offering, allows customers to save money and better
adapt their IT environments to changing business requirements. A new delivery
option which lets customers acquire all or part of their infrastructure
requirements for a single monthly price, allowing them to substitute new
technologies as needed.
- Standby Capacity On Demand offerings for blade servers and storage
systems.
IBM plans to offer customers later this year a configured blade offering where
the customer would pay upfront for some of the blades, with the ability to
turn on and purchase additional blades over a six-month period. These new
proposed offerings will help build on IBM's popular "pay as you grow"
strategy.
The new offerings include capabilities in three interrelated areas:
integration, virtualization and automation.
Integration -- creates business flexibility, by integrating disparate,
unconnected business and IT processes allowing the collaboration of people,
processes and information.
Virtualization -- improves asset utilization because it allows you to treat
resources as a single pool, accessing and managing resources by effect rather
than physical location. Virtualization turns isolated islands of resources
into valuable data and increased capacity.
Automation -- increases business responsiveness. Automation allows your
systems to sense and respond to the various peaks and conditions it
encounters, dynamically, and automatically shifting resources as required.
Automation allows users to get the right resources, when they need it, and
where they need it.
These offerings are based on open standards supporting customers' diverse
computing environments and protecting their investment in existing systems,
applications and skills.
"Today our customers are overwhelmed by technology that is too complex and
inefficient. With today's announcements, we make the IT infrastructure more
integrated and automated, and we hide much of its complexity from the people
who need to use it," said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager e-business
on demand. "As a result businesses can achieve far greater productivity from
their technology infrastructure, and the money they save can be invested in
innovation for the future."
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