New Big Blue Products Translate Big Data into Big Business

At its Edge2013 partner conference in Las Vegas IBM announced new products to help cloud adoption as companies begin building Software Defined Environments (SDE). The event conversation can be followed on Twitter hashtag #IBMEdge.

“Cloud computing and Big Data analytics are playing key roles in helping organizations lower operating expenses, improve efficiencies, and increase productivity,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group. “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.”

Power Systems

IBM introduced nine new Power Systems offerings, each providing advanced capabilities in big data analytics and cloud computing. With industry-themed solutions that combine IBM Power Systems and specialized software for big data analytics, five of the packaged solutions were for healthcare and retail industries. Three additional solutions provide organizations in any industry sector with advanced computing capabilities including predictive analytics, scoring and optimization techniques, as well as turnkey cloud offerings that support "pay-per-use" business models or fit-for-purpose private cloud infrastructures. Additionally, new entry-level technical computing solutions were announced, to integrate the company’s Platform Computing software directly on IBM Power Systems, Flex Systems, System x, iDataPlex, and IBM Storage Systems.

Storage

IBM released its FlashSystem series Monday - a series of all-Flash appliances that have been enhanced to deliver 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. Other storage portfolio enhancements included support for 4TB drives to its Storwize V7000 and XIV advanced storage systems for 33 percent more capacity in the same space, and new capabilities to XIV that let clients send large volumes of data between systems through the cloud without performance degradation.

PureFlex, Cloud and Big Data

In support of cloud, mobile, social and analytics, IBM added solutions that will build on the strong global momentum of PureSystems. IBM PureFlex Solution for Cloud Backup and Recovery incorporates specialized patterns based on Tivoli Storage Manager, Microsoft Hyper-V and the SAP Business Suite to help clients reduce the security risks they often face when deploying cloud solutions.  The Mobile Application Platform Pattern is a solution based on IBM Worklight server on PureSystems for both Power and x86 that can accelerate client access to millions of mobile users by allowing new mobile solutions to be deployed in as little as 30-40 minutes. Finally, the  IBM Connections Pattern will allow clients to deploy their social business platform on IBM PureSystems.