It’s almost ironic that IBM, the company that coined the term “Big Iron” with its mainframe products, will try to reduce the data centre environment.
But this is now a stated goal for IBM. The company has unveiled a number of major additions to its Flex System portfolio to not just reduce data centre operating costs, but also increase the size of clouds.
The new offering combines the server technology with new virtualization, networking and management tools. The strategy behind the Flex Systems are to enable channel partners to consolidate existing IT infrastructures and help customers use smaller data centres for deploying, managing and securing increasingly larger clouds.
According to IBM, this announcement comes at a critical time, as organizations look to consolidate their existing data centres and shift greater workloads to the cloud. In fact, one study has determined that by 2014, businesses will have migrated more than 62 per cent of their existing database workloads to the cloud.
The Flex Systems consist of three systems built on both IBM Power7+ and a “double dense” x222 system built on x86 technology. Additionally, IBM has upgraded the Flex System Manager so that clients can monitor and manage up to 5,000 infrastructure end points and do so from any location utilizing iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile devices.
IBM currently sports more than 4,500 channel partners for PureFlex and Flex System. This new product release is being positioned by IBM as an additional choice for solution providers who are looking to provide customers for the x86 and Power market segments.
As part of this announcement, IBM channel partners worldwide can now select from Flex System bundles that are specially configured and priced for their local markets.
IBM Flex Systems are available in a build-to-order offering.