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New IBM Offerings Promise Reduced Cost, Complexity for Midsize Companies

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IBM has announced new BladeCenter servers and System Storage offerings designed to help midsize businesses simplify and automate the management of information technology resources, applications, processes and services.

IBM is also introducing a new version of WebSphere's industry leading application server that will help midsize businesses reduce both cost and IT complexity, while enhancing the speed of customer response time on the Web. The new version will also provide a highly scalable and reliable platform for midsize businesses to collaborate and securely exchange data.

These Express Advantage IT optimization solutions are built on an open architecture to optimize computing resources and feature advanced virtualization capabilities in addition to dynamic capabilities that reduce the number of hardware components and software resources. This allows midsize companies to free up floor space, save energy and simplify administrative tasks. The new offerings are the latest addition to the Express Advantage portfolio, reflecting IBM's ongoing commitment to help midsize businesses find new and affordable ways to apply technology for greater value.

According to the IBM Global 2008 CEO Study, more than one third of all CEOs from midsize companies identified the innovative use of information technology as a key factor affecting their ability to respond to rapidly changing business conditions.

"Implementation speed, adding new capabilities and reducing complexity are all critically important to helping our clients grow," said Mark Wyllie, chief operating officer of Compuquip Technologies, Inc. "Through our partnership with IBM, we have seen over and over again the value of server and storage virtualization as well as a more flexible software infrastructure. The benefits are increased productivity and return on investment resulting from the elimination of strains on time and resources."

IBM Express Advantage is a comprehensive portfolio of offerings that has been rigorously tested to ensure that offerings are easy to buy and deploy and are competitively priced. They are developed in conjunction with a network of IBM-certified Business Partners who know their clients' industry and marketplace. IBM Express Advantage offers enhanced capabilities to help midsize customers navigate the breadth of IBM to find the right IBM and IBM Business Partner resources.

"IBM's new IT optimization solutions give midsize companies maximum performance and efficiency at an affordable price, offering a robust infrastructure platform that can quickly and easily accommodate growth," said Marc Dupaquier, general manager, IBM Global Midmarket. "We're committed to helping our midsize customers succeed in today's highly competitive global economy with innovative business and technology solutions built uniquely for their needs."

Optimizing IT to gain efficiency and competitiveness

The new IBM Express Advantage offerings include:

IBM Power 560 Express

The IBM Power 560 Express combines IBM's industry-leading POWER6 processor technology with enhanced virtualization and energy efficiency, offering outstanding price/performance and value for midsize organizations that want to be responsive to changing business needs and realize significant benefits for their application and database servers. With the new Power 560 Express clients can save up to 80 percent of the energy by consolidating 13 Sun Fire V490 servers on a single Power 560 server with PowerVM compared to consolidating those same servers on four Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers with Dynamic System Domains.

IBM BladeCenter LS22 Express and IBM BladeCenter LS42 Express

IBM BladeCenter LS22 and LS42 blade servers feature the latest quad-core AMD Opteron processors and are available with solid-state drives, which are 4 times more reliable than traditional drives and use 87 percent less power -- saving 20 watts per blade. IBM offers the only blade servers with solid state drives.

The LS22 blade server is faster than competitive two socket blade servers and is ideal for companies like financial services firms, universities and research labs, and oil and gas companies that run high-performance applications.

The LS42 blade server consumes up to 13 percent less power than comparable blade offerings. It also provides 20 percent faster memory, so it is well suited to run memory-intensive applications like those for virtualization and database.

With the new 2+2 program IBM is announcing today, clients can start with two-sockets on the LS42 server and expand to a four-socket server as their business needs demand. This allows growing companies to only pay for the capacity they need, giving them the flexibility to grow into their blades and protect their investments.

BladeCenter S Express

IBM BladeCenter S for smaller firms is now available with industry-first shared storage, bringing enterprise-class storage capabilities to smaller firms and branch offices that lack the IT staff and budgets to manage expanding volumes of business information. With this innovative new approach, IBM is cutting the cost of shared storage technology by 30-40 percent and -- supported by new, complementary features like Start Now Advisor and BladeCenter Service Advisor -- making it easier to set up and own (1).

BladeCenter S is specially designed to help small and medium-sized firms simplify the management of technology needed to run a business -- from servers, to phone systems and business applications. BladeCenter S can help reduce the 25 to 45 servers used by an average midsize company by up to 80 percent (2).

IBM System Storage TS2900 Tape Autoloader Express

The IBM System Storage TS2900 Tape Autoloader Express offers growing companies IBM's latest generation Linear Tape-Open TapeTM (LTOTM) tape drive featuring up to 7.2TB of capacity. For midsize company owners and IT managers who need increased capacity and data encryption for the midrange open-systems environment, this offering provides entry-level automated backup for rack systems with low-profile, high density storage capacity. This offering incorporates IBM's new patented High Density slot technology and can be operated remotely via an easy to use Web interface.

IBM System Storage 7214 Tape & DVD Enclosure Express

The IBM System Storage 7214 Tape & DVD Enclosure Express is a low-cost storage and archival solution for IBM Power Systems that offers midsize companies higher performance in the most compact and affordable packaging possible. The 7214 storage enclosure provides faster data transfer rates compared to existing SCSI devices through its SAS Electronic Interface, and gives companies the choice of several drive technologies, including DAT, LTO and DVD drives. Its low-profile design enables it to be installed in one EIA unit (1U) of a standard 19-inch server rack.

WebSphere Application Server - Express V7

In today's business environment, midmarket companies require faster response from their IT infrastructure to enable them to address changing market opportunity. In addition, they continue to look for ways to reduce IT complexity for better security and management as well as reuse.

WebSphere Application Server - Express V7 is an affordable, ready-to-go solution for developing, running and managing dynamic Web sites and applications. The solution offers a rich application deployment environment with capabilities for transaction management, security and scalability, for thousands of applications.

New performance enhancements to this solution deliver data center efficiency via the ability to consolidate workloads enabling a smaller footprint, less energy and less cost. New flexible management features also improve efficiencies of administration and allow remote production resource management of WebSphere Application Server - Express V7.

The solution delivers simplified programming models for building reusable persistent objects through single-step installation and configuration, wizards and default configurations. It also offers easy to navigate documentation that includes extensive use of sample code to help ensure fast and smooth start-up New Java EE 5 certification, EJB 3.0 support and Java Persistence API (JPA) and Java Development Kit (JDK) 6.0.

Availability

The 2+2 program will be available to LS42 customers in November. IBM BladeCenter S with shared storage will begin shipping in volume later this month.

WebSphere Application Server - Express V7, IBM Power 560 Express, IBM BladeCenter LS22 Express, IBM BladeCenter LS42 Express, BladeCenter S Express, IBM System Storage TS2900 Tape Autoloader Express, IBM System Storage 7214 Tape & DVD Enclosure Express are available now.

For more information about Express Advantage and the new Express Advantage offerings, visit www.ibm.com/expressadvantage.

___________________________________ 

1. When compared with a comparable Fibre Channel-based Storage Area Network.

2. Server reduction achieved through the use of virtualization inside BladeCenter.

 

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