IBM Boosts Security, Cloud, Analytics Capabilities with New Power Systems, Storage, Mainframe Technologies
The new offerings include the most powerful enterprise Power Systems to date, a new high-end disk storage system, and key software updates for IBM’s newest mainframe computer.
IBM has released new technologies to help organizations meet their need for improved security, take advantage of cloud computing, and manage and analyze vast amounts of data.
New Power Systems Tout POWER7+, Elastic Capacity on Demand and Fast Business Analytics
IBM’s new enterprise Power Systems includes hardware and software innovations to help customers gain business insights fast and securely.
IBM Power 770 and Power 780 servers now feature the new POWER7+ microprocessor, boosting performance boosts of application workloads compared with previous versions. Among its many features, the POWER7+ offers an expanded 2.5x L3 cache memory, greater security with faster file encryption for the IBM AIX operating system, and memory compression that results in no increased energy usage over previous generation POWER7 chips.
At the top of the Power line, the Power 795 server enhancements enable customers to run demanding applications such as business analytics fast by utilizing up to 16 terabytes of memory with new 64GB Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMM).
In addition, IBM has added several new capabilities to its family of Power Systems servers to help customers build virtualized private cloud or managed service cloud infrastructures, and respond dynamically to changes in application and workload requirements. Elastic Capacity on Demand for Power Systems Pools, for example, enables the sharing of resources across multiple servers, which can improve the availability and enhance the access to resources during planned and unplanned maintenance activities.
When managing a cloud-based infrastructure with IBM PowerVM virtualization software, customers can more easily move individual server partitions to quickly balance resources in reaction to changing business needs. Single virtual machines can be moved faster and concurrent migrations can occur faster than with previous versions.
The average corporate IT infrastructure is cyber-attacked nearly 60,000 times every day and the average total organizational cost of a data breach is $5.5 million, making security a top priority for enterprises. To enhance data security and regulatory compliance, IBM PowerSC security and compliance software along with Trusted Surveyor has been updated to provide real-time security alerts and delivers improved compliance reporting.
IBM Accelerates Enterprise Storage Capabilities for Big Data
The deluge of information organizations continue to grapple with is posing increasingly dynamic challenges for IT administrators. Mounting data volumes are stressing system performance, manageability, and security. To help customers respond to these challenges, IBM today solidified two of its high-end storage systems with performance and security updates.
The IBM System Storage DS8870 is the newest member of the company’s DS8000 family of “high-density” enterprise class storage systems. Upgraded with the IBM POWER7 processors and up to 1TB of system cache, the DS8870 improves performance for transaction processing applications than the current DS8800 model. The DS8870 comes standard with full self-encrypting drives for additional security.
On the tape storage front, IBM updated the IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 Release 3, a system that melds virtualization with magnetic tape. The system is an update of the TS7700 Enterprise Virtual Tape Library System, which is typically used in enterprises powered by mainframes and is designed to help administrators virtualize their existing tape storage systems for improved manageability, capacity and security. The virtualization engine provides end-to-end encryption and connectivity of up to six systems in a grid architecture for greater access to information and improved redundancy.
The new Technical Computing for Big Data solution includes IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS), an advanced file management platform often used in high-performance computing environments for storing and delivering large volumes of data for weather modeling, oil exploration and digital media production. Combining GPFS with the latest IBM Platform Symphony scheduler and application platform, as well as the IBM Intelligent Cluster, delivers enterprise clients a scalable, high performance environment for analytics.
New Mainframe Software for Operational Analytics, Cloud, and Security
IBM’s software offerings for its newest mainframe -- the zEnterprise EC12 (unveiled on August 28) -- help clients operate their IT more efficiently while making use of critical information to fuel business insights and help provide better service to clients.
The zEC12 can run transaction processing applications and analytics applications on one machine, enabling clients to receive and analyze structured business data in real-time. Now, IBM is making it simpler, faster, and more affordable to run analytics on System z with the new IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator V3 appliance that can speed response times for analytics to provide business insights and results. The Accelerator can also reduce the need to store data on disk drives in the mainframe by 95 percent, which can dramatically lowering storage costs.
IBM is enabling its popular transaction processor, CICS (Customer Information Control System), to be developed, delivered, and operated in the cloud to help zEnterprise clients build private cloud environments that can support a high volume of customer transactions. With the new CICS 5.1 portfolio, interactive applications such as ATM systems, bank-teller applications, and insurance applications can be made available in the cloud.
The new IBM Security zSecure Suite V1.31.1 enhances security intelligence by spotting unusual activity before the system is compromised, monitoring for threats with real-time alerts and network behavior analytics, and managing security audits. Integration with QRadar SIEM (security information and event management) provides enterprise-wide security monitoring.
System Networking
In addition to these systems and storage updates, IBM also announced a Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller for its enterprise networking portfolio. The new IBM Programmable Network Controller provides intelligent software for IBM RackSwitch and other OpenFlow-enabled switches. Through OpenFlow, people can create virtual networks with the scalability and flexibility required to respond to business changes in cloud and mobile services environments.
More information about these announcements and IBM Smarter Computing are available at www.ibm.com/smartercomputing.