IBM Pushes ‘Software Defined’ with Big Data, Cloud, Mobile Solutions

IBM (IBM) buffed up its systems portfolio with a flood of new Big Data- and cloud-centric solutions for storage, high performance computing, PureSystems and mobile aimed at helping organizations move closer to building a software defined environment (SDE).

“Cloud computing and Big Data analytics are playing key roles in helping organizations lower operating expenses, improve efficiencies, and increase productivity,” said Tom Rosamilia, IBM Systems & Technology Group senior vice president. “But they’re also enabling greater and faster access to business insights, which is fundamentally transforming the ways in which organizations, public and private, are interacting with, learning from, and supporting their customers.”

Here’s a list of IBM’s new storage solutions and improvements:

• IBM FlashSystem appliances, first unwrapped in April. According to IBM, the flash line delivers less than 1/10 the cost per transaction while using 4 percent of the energy and 2 percent of the space compared to hybrid disk and flash systems.
• Added support for 4TB drives to Storwize V7000 and XIV storage systems and new capabilities to XIV that let customers send large volumes of data between systems through the cloud without performance degradation.
• Enhanced its Easy Tier technology, which automatically moves data to the most effective storage tier in a storage system.
• New IBM Linear Tape File System Enterprise Edition lets customers use tape storage as a separate tier for greater management and access.
• Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) Operations Center features a new and intuitive management.

Here’s what IBM added to Power Systems:

• Nine new Power Systems offerings, including five packaged solutions for the healthcare and retail industries that combine IBM’s Power Systems with specialized software.
• Three additional solutions for organizations with advanced computing capabilities including predictive analytics, scoring and optimization techniques, and turnkey cloud offerings that support "pay-per-use" business models or fit-for-purpose private cloud infrastructures.
• Released the 25th Anniversary Edition of its i operating system, which is available on either a Power 720 or Power 740 server, and includes an IBM i 7.1 processor license and three service vouchers free of charge.

IBM’s new entry-level technical computing solution:

• New Application Ready Solutions for Technical Computing aimed at the automotive, aerospace, oil and gas and life sciences industries that comes pre-integrated with Platform Computing workload management software, IBM Flex System or IBM System x servers, IBM System Storage and tailored applications.

Here are IBM’s PureFlex related cloud, mobile and Big Data solutions:

• IBM PureFlex Solution for Cloud Backup and Recovery that incorporates specialized patterns based on Tivoli Storage Manager, Microsoft Hyper-V and the SAP Business Suite.
• The IBM Mobile Application Platform Pattern based on IBM Worklight server on PureSystems for both Power and x86 that can accelerate access to millions of mobile users.
• IBM Connections Pattern enables users to deploy their social business platform on IBM PureSystems.

And, finally, IBM's system networking addition:

• The IBM SAN96B-5 96-port, a 16Gbps Gen 5 Fibre Channel Storage Area Networking (FC SAN) switch with Fabric Vision technology to unify SAN management through IBM’s diagnostic, monitoring and management technology.

The technologies were announced at IBM's Edge 2013 Conference happening this week in Las Vegas.