IBM Announces Major Updates Their Power Systems Offerings

by Paul Rudo on 03/10/12 at 10:04 pm

On October 3 2012, IBM announced a series of major updates to their Power Systems line. The company invested over $1.4 billion on research and development in order to produce a new line of offerings that address customers’ demands for better security, the ability to leverage the cloud, and the ability to better manage large and fast-growing data pools.

According to IBM, companies are threatened by over 60,000 cyber attacks on a daily basis, and the average cost of a major corporate data breach is well in excess of $5 million dollars.

These new updates all fall within IBM’s overall focus on building Smarter Computing solutions which provide data-driven answers to the increasingly complex challenges faced by organizations.

Some of these changes include:

A new line of servers, designed around the POWER7+ processor. This new technology promises up to a 40% boost in performance, expanded 2.5xL3 cache memory, and accelerated encryption for AIX. Another nice feature is the ability to compress memory without requiring an increase in energy usage.
The Power 795 server line has been upgraded to support up to 16TB of RAM, to handle the most demanding business analytics applications.
IBM has also introduced some new features, such as Elastic Capacity on Demand, which allow for more powerful and flexible cloud infrastructure implementations and improved sharing of resources across multiple servers.
The new IBM PowerVM makes it easier to balance resources and move server partitions in order to quickly react to changing demands.
In response to the increasing compliance demands placed on organizations, IBM PowerSC has also been updated to provide enhanced compliance reporting and security alerts in real-time.
IBM’s TS7700 Enterprise Virtual Tape Library System, which is typically used by mainframe environments, allows for virtualization to be performed in a magnetic tape environment. This system has been upgraded with improved redundancy, encryption, and the ability to combine up to 6 system in a grid environment.
The new Technical Computing for Big Data system is designed provides sophisticated file management for high performance computing and analytics applications.
IBM introduced the zEnterprise EC12 mainframe, which is amongst the first to run both analytics and transaction processing from a single device, allowing for more sophisticated real-time insight into business data.
A new range of financial services was announced for businesses wanting to leverage the benefits of IBM’s new offerings while minimizing up-front capital outlay. IBM has also introduced a buy-back program for clients wanting to migrate over from competitor offerings.

For more information on IBM’s latest product releases, you can view the official release here.