By Bill Moran and Rich Ptak
Just out in a joint announcement Lenovo has agreed with IBM to buy X86 business. See the announcement at: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43016.wss . Price is said to be at Lenovo's desired $2.3B. We'll be tracking and discussing the impact on IBM as things evolve.
Congratulations to both; we'll post more shortly!
IBM’s latest
announcements describe two major upgrades, one each for the X86 and flash
products. While it might appear that an emphasis on Watson overshadows
everything else, this reminds customers of IBM’s focus on IT infrastructure.
Excessive hype
about Cloud as the wave of the future is leading some companies to believe they
can ignore infrastructure. Any company doing so risks severe business
embarrassment. We recently participated in a discussion about companies, with
mainframes, that were cutting mainframe staffing to the point that they lacked
sufficient resources to perform a new release upgrade. We all know that
software always needs upgrading at some point. Therefore, those companies will
suffer a rude shock when faced with the cost of a consultant to install
upgrades. Of course, current management might be happy to take credit for
successful (?) cost cutting as they leave the future consequences to someone
else. IT infrastructure, both human and equipment, remains important. Let’s
look at the products that IBM is announcing. New products were announced for:
The announcement
does not discuss Power Systems or mainframe products.- System x
- PureFlex
- Storage
- Software Defined Environment
- System Networking
System x
The key
announcement is clearly the sixth generation IBM X6 platform delivering
high-end server technology to IBM’s Intel-based offering. Compared with the
older eX5, this new generation supports up to 3 times as much memory while
delivering better reliability. IBM calculates that acquisition costs will be up
to 28% lower than earlier comparable systems. The new rack design allows future
technology upgrades to be made using the same chassis providing significant
investment protection going forward.
The new System
x3650 M4, designed for Big Data workloads, leads the industry by supporting up
to 56 terabytes of storage. The additional capacity combines with enhance
performance and energy efficient operations make especially attractive for
scale-out of Big Data clusters.
Enhanced with the
new Intel Xeon E5-2400 v2processors, the IBM System x3630 and the x3530 M4
General Business rack servers feature 25% more cores and deliver up to a 21%
performance increase over the previous generation. They are designed and
optimized to facilitate faster data analysis and business decisions.
PureFlex Solutions
IBM
introduced several notable PureSystem and Flex offerings. The Flex System x880
x6 Computer offers the new x6 architecture for faster database performance and
more scalability. The existing x240 Compute node is enhanced with new Xeon
E5-2600 v2 series chips. Modular
configuration for IBM Power and Flex systems allows more flexibility and
savings. Compute and storage books can be swapped out. Upgrades to new
generations of memory and processors fit into existing chassis further reducing
costs and overhead. We must mention IBM PureSystem's 98% performance advantage over HP’s performance on the SPECvirt_sc2013
benchmark released last year. (To be fair, HP ran their test before the release
of the latest INTEL chip used by IBM. Still, the difference is there.)
Finally, there are new PureFlex and Flex application specific offerings. These include: IBM System x Solutions for: SAP Hana on X6, Smart Cloud Orchestrator, VMware Cloud, Microsoft Exchange and SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse Accelerator.
Finally, there are new PureFlex and Flex application specific offerings. These include: IBM System x Solutions for: SAP Hana on X6, Smart Cloud Orchestrator, VMware Cloud, Microsoft Exchange and SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse Accelerator.
Storage
In
storage, the big news is a new set of new flash offerings offered for data
centers as both standalone arrays and as complete solutions. The IBM
FlashSystem 840 solution offers capacity ranging from 4-48 TB, is field
upgradeable, fully redundant and hot swappable. Read latency is 135 µsec; write
latency is 90 µsec. Bandwidth scales to 8GB/s, and performance is up to 1.1
million IOPS. IBM offers multiple flash alternatives to assure maximum
performance. These can be attached to
SANs over Fibre Channel, InfiniBand or FCoE, but cannot connect via iSCSI.
Also new
is the FlashSystem Enterprise Performance Solution, which couples the
FlashSystem 840 with IBM's Storwize SAN Volume Controllers. This solution offers a suite of advanced
storage services including IBM's Real-Time Compression and storage
virtualization.
Separately,
the IBM eXFlash memory-channel storage is a dramatic innovation that connects
flash on a DIMM directly to the X6 system’s memory bus. This enables larger
virtual machines with greater performance by providing the server with a larger
cache. Database transactions can also run faster.
IBM
announced an innovative new acquisition model for the IBM XIV Storage System
that we believe will be attractive to Service Providers. Customers can now
install a full XIV storage array in advance of growing workload needs. These XIV systems include full authorization
for use of the entire system's performance and capacity; however, the initial
payment is only 60% of the first frame's price.
As storage needs grow, IBM delivers additional frames (typically when
utilization reaches 70%) for just $1 plus any remaining payments for the prior
frame.
Working
with IBM's financing unit, this model can also be used with clients who prefer
the benefits and flexibility of leases -- often resulting in even lower cost
and OPEX/CAPEX flexibility.
Software Defined Environment
Using
software to define the datacenter network (SDN) is increasingly accepted.
Interest is spreading to include systems and servers. Users see great value in
the flexibility resulting from defining an environment with software. One
advantage is better utilization from fast, flexible resource allocation and
configuration. Automating workload allocation and assignments combined with a
software defined environment (SDE) have the potential for multiple benefits
e.g. improved performance, reduced costs, etc., all issues for companies
anticipating future cloud and hybrid cloud investments.
As more
companies are using OpenStack as a foundation for cloud environments, they want
automation for maximum flexibility in using cloud resources and to reduce admin
overhead. In response, IBM’s Platform Resource Scheduler delivers dynamic
resource management for IBM OpenStack clouds. The result is better service and
management using proven technology from their acquisition of Platform
Computing.
System Networking
IBM
System Networking RackSwitch G7028 is the newest member of the System
Networking Family. It has 24 Gigabit
Ethernet ports to connect servers and storage to 10 GbE environments. Port airflow configurations are compatible
with System x, Power, Flex System and BladeCenter. It is targeted to the needs of small and
medium-sized business. For more details on its configuration and performance
please visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/networking/switches/rack/g7028/index.html.
Summary
Given Lenovo's success and customer satisfaction after acquiring IBM's PC business, we expect that customers will benefit from past efforts and investment by IBM.
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