IBM Launches Blade Migration Center; Offers HP Customers $1,000 to Migrate to Industry-Leading IBM BladeCenter Platform
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the development of a Blade Migration Center aimed at helping clients escape the complexity of multiple incompatible architectures by migrating to a smarter IT platform, IBM BladeCenter.
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IBM on Friday announced it has signed up 115 companies since early September to develop for its eServer BladeCenter open specification it co-authored with Intel.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ unveiled a Web site and IT security software application Thursday as part of its effort to compete with Hewlett-PackardÂ and SunÂ for customers in the fast-growing SMB sector. New customers can share tips on how to migrate from servers to mainframes on the Web site, which acts as an online community for users, system integrators, software vendors, and academic institutions. Existing customers can use the enhanced z/VM virtualization software to support more virtualized memory or use the new Tivoli zSecure V1.8.1 suite to monitor threats and enforce compliance. IBM created the new version of zSecure with technology from itsÂ first-quarter acquisition of Consul Risk Management. That purchase is part of IBM's strategy to spend $100 million toÂ simplify its mainframe platformÂ by 2011, hoping to persuade businesses to buy its System z9 mainframe computers instead of high-end servers. IBM sells an enterprise-class version of its z9 for large corporations and a business-class version for SMBs. Compared to servers running on chips from Sun or Intel, customers can save money by using power-efficient mainframes, said Jim Stallings, general manager of System z for IBM's systems and technology group. "The biggest reason customers are drawn to the mainframe -- a trend we've seen for more than 10 years now -- is power," Stallings said. "Servers running on the faster chips and greater numbers of chips draw an enormous amount of power, and our smaller customers can't get that power. I'm talking about basic electricity." The streamlined architecture of the mainframe makes it attractive to customers who need to process large amounts of information, such as financial services firms and hedge funds, he said. That group is quickly growing to include midrange banks, including the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus and Nexar, an Internet banking company in Belgium. "SMB customers are realizing that they cannot afford to change their infrastructure every two years because it's too expensive. The cost comes not so much in the hardware as in training people to administer it," Stallings said. "Our customers came to us and said, 'We want to migrate more work to the mainframe because of the economics. We're way over the religious debates about which processor is faster -- we don't care -- we need better economics.'" IBM is making a big bet on its mainframe business with the $100 million investment, but the gambit may pay off. In theÂ first quarter of 2007, the company credited strong growth in its software and system z sectors for an 8 percent increase in net income to $1.8 billion and a 6.6 percent increase in revenue to $22 billion, compared to the same period in 2006.
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IBM said Thursday that it plans to build a blade server system for small to medium-sized businesses (SMB). For IBM, that means customers with fewer than 1,000 employees.
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IBM is adding to its blade server line with an upcoming model targeted at small-to-medium-sized businesses.
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New switch and expansion card address market demand for faster throughout from blade servers.
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Â Hewlett-Packard Co. on Thursday signaled its commitment to the Intel Corp. processor architecture and carrier-grade Linux for telecommunications infrastructure, announcing it will introduce a blade server based on those specifications as part of a new hardware, software and services strategy.
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International Business Machines Corp.  IBM.N said it is making the design of its "blade" computer  servers widely available, in a move designed to gain wider  acceptability in data centers and the telecommunications  industry.
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Four-sockets 'O Fun A long time ago, in a data centers far, far away, blade servers ran on laptop chips from Transmeta. These days companies such as HP pop double-wide, scorching hot Itanium-packed blades into their chassis.â¦
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five new HS20 models and one new JS20 blade server. The company also is rolling out new features designed to improve the performance of BladeCenter systems.
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Hewlett-Packard is beefing up its Integrity BladeSystems with a new model released last week thatâs intended to handle memory and CPU intensive applications.
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IBM will soon begin shipping upgraded models of its HS20 and JS20 blade servers, including a new SCSI (small computer system interface) option for the HS20 that will double the number of SCSI blades that users can fit into a single chassis, the company
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. is sticking with processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) in a new family of blade PCs designed to compete with offerings from IBM Corp. HP announced its BladeSystem bc2000 and bc2500 products on Monday, promising to reduce IT management costs and improve data security for corporate buyers by replacing traditional desktop and notebook PCs. Specialist blade manufacturers like ClearCube Technology Inc. and Wyse Technology Inc. also compete in this segment, as vendors see growing demand from businesses that struggle to balance security and compliance regulations with an increasingly dispersed and outsourced workforce. The new BladeSystems are the desktop version of HP's range of remote computing products. They fit between a blade server arrangement for workers with light computing needs and a blade workstation system for engineers and stock traders. In all three models, the user connects to a remote processor and data storage by accessing the office network with a desk-based access device such as a thin client. Since the main computing resources are located in a single, controlled data center, the corporate IT department can cut management costs by making hardware repairs and applying software patches remotely instead of visiting numerous workers at their desks. HP is selling the bc2000 for US$1,000 per unit when a company buys 10 of the machines. Although that is up to twice the price of a traditional desktop, the IT department can pay off the difference in 12 months of operation, said Tate Davis, CCI product manager for HP's consolidated client infrastructure group. IBM is chasing that same market with its HC10 blade and a TC10 thin client from its partner Devon IT Inc., both launched in May. IBM also targets midrange business users, but uses an Intel Corp. Core 2 Duo processor, 8G bytes of memory and 60G bytes of storage. In contrast, HP upgraded its previous blade PC -- the BladeSystem bc1500 -- by increasing the storage from 40G bytes to 80G bytes, the memory from 512M bytes to 1G byte, and the processor from an AMD Athlon 64 1500-series chip to Athlon 64 2100-series (for the bc2000) or dual-core Athlon 64 X2 (for the bc2500). The extra power meets user demands for a blade PC capable of running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista Business edition and its fast graphics handling, Davis said. "Customers say 'If we're going to do thousands of units for a wholesale desktop replacement, we need this thing to support Vista, we need a graphics look and feel equivalent to a desktop PC, and we need a little more processing power than the bc1500, our previous generation,'" Davis said. The bc1500 ran Windows XP Professional. HP says that power allows the bc2000 to outperform other blade computing designs, since it accesses those new processors over a dedicated link instead of through a "time-share" network where multiple users tap into a single blade computer. "The IT department is being asked to do more than keep the trains running on time," Davis said. "They also have to help the end user comply with disaster continuity and recovery, handle outsourcing and offshore jobs, and maintain high security and compliance with the data." The bc2000 is shipping now, with the bc2500 to follow by late July. Pricing for the bc2500 has not yet been announced. Â
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IBM said it plans to build a blade server system for small to medium-sized businesses.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems is reaching for a larger share of the blade server market with Wednesday's launch of new models, including the first-ever Sun blades from its new alliance with chip maker Intel. Sun said the Sun Blade X6250 (starting list price: $3,695) is a two-socket server with dual-core Intel Xeon processors in each socket. It's the first Intel-based Sun server since the two companies announced in January aÂ deal for joint engineering, design, and marketingÂ of Intel's chips and Sun's Solaris operating system. Previously, the only x86 architecture processors Sun used were from Advanced Micro Devices. Sun also unveiled the Sun Blade X6220 ($3,995), a two-socket blade powered by dual-core AMD Opteron processors and the T6300 ($5,995) one-socket blade powered by Sun's own UltraSparc T1 processor. Sun also introduced the Sun Blade 6000 chassis ($4,995), which can hold up to 10 Sun blade servers and provide power, cooling and network connections to them. A user could install any combination of AMD, Intel and Sun-powered blades in one chassis. By offering Sun, AMD, and Intel processors in a blade form factor, "this is the most open and versatile blade platform out on the market," said Mike McNerney, director of Sun's blades server product line. "It is a compelling and interesting proposition." By using Intel inside its blades, Sun can now serve customers who favor the Intel processor platform, said Matthew Eastwood, group vice president for enterprise platform research at IDC. AMD made a good run at Intel with competitive processors in recent years but Intel has re-established itself as the market leader. "I think the biggest advantage for Sun is in the area of credibility in the x86 market. It really shows to enterprise customers that Sun is committed to x86," said Eastwood. Using Intel may also make Sun more competitive with blade server industry leaders Hewlett-Packard and IBM, he said, though they are far ahead in sales. Over the last four quarters, IBM sold $1.136 billionÂ worth of blade servers for a 38.9 percent market share, closely followed by HP's $1.127 billionÂ in revenue for a 38.6 percent market share, according to IDC numbers. Sun ranked fifth with only $100 million in blade revenue for a 3.4 percent share. That gap gives HP an opportunity to criticize Sun's latest news. "Sun is a non-player in blades and has failed to grow any appreciable market share," said Eric Krueger, an HP spokesman, in an e-mail. Noting that HP introduced its c-Class blade servers in mid-2006 at about the same time Sun introduced its SunBlade 8000 line, Krueger added, "HP has enjoyed a rather quick ascension to No. 1 in blade revenues and shipments while Sun owns a very small position of this rapidly growing market." But it's the rapidly growing nature of the blade market that, along with Intel deal, give Sun a chance to improve its share, said Eastwood. IDC forecasts the blade server market to grow to $11.3 billion by 2011 from $3.77 billion in 2007, and for blades to account for 28.8 percent of all server unit sales in 2011, up from 11.3 percent this year. "Sun has a long way to go but there's really no reason why a customer wouldn't consider Sun, particularly a traditional Sun customer or some emerging classes of customers like Web 2.0 companies," he said. "They are not really married to one supplier or another." The Sun-Intel deal also opens another front in Intel's competitive battle with AMD. Every Intel-powered Sun blade sold is a lost sales opportunity for a Sun-AMD blade. But AMD doesn't see it that way. "I suppose you could look at it that way, but if you look at the market it general we're continuing to grow our footprint in the marketplace," said Bruce Shaw, AMD's director of worldwide commercial and enterprise marketing. AMD is scheduled to launch a newÂ quad-core processor, code-named Barcelona, around mid-year.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Sun Microsystems launched a new blade server system today that is capable, it says, of providing up to twice the memory and input/output capacity of rival systems. The powerful new server is part of Sun&#39;s attempt to increase its share of the fast-growing blade market, which has been dominated until now by IBM and HP.
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In an effort to encourage hardware vendors to build components for the blade platform they co-develop, Intel Corp. and IBM Corp. on Thursday will open up parts of the BladeCenter design specifications, according to documents obtained by IDG News Service.