Friday, 25 April 2008

IBM Addresses Web 2.0 Computing with New Servers

IBM has taken the wraps off its latest range of Web 2.0 styled computing solution designed to help organisations that operate with massive data centers respond quickly to changes in workload demand in an energy efficient way.

The iDataPlex is a new rack system featuring design innovations in cooling and efficiency that can help replace the inefficient “white-box” servers commonly used by Internet companies.

Taking a page from the Internet's model, iDataPlex is built for stateless computing that effectively turns many separate computers into a pool of shared resources or “cloud.”

The new solution is said to be ideal for industries that handle tens of thousands of servers such as online gaming, social networks, Search and Internet companies.

A recent study done by WinterGreen Research revealed that the Web 2.0 server market is valued at 10 billion market today.

Companies that operate massive scale-out data centers spend 10 to 30 times more on energy costs per square foot than a typical office building. The energy powers both hundreds of thousands of servers and the air conditioning needed to cool them. The exponential growth of such data centers will continue as streaming video, online gaming and social networks spike Internet traffic, requiring companies to build ever vaster pools of computers that devour energy resources to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“With iDataPlex, IBM is making Web 2.0-style computing more efficient and commercializing it for Internet companies and other high performance segments like financial services and research,” said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president of IBM Systems and Technology Group.

“iDataPlex can provide a foundation that companies can build on to provide improved services to Web users around the world.”

According to IBM, iDataplex will be an important element in helping clients develop a new enterprise data center, which offers dramatic improvements in IT efficiency and provides for rapid deployment of new IT services to support future business growth.

IBM also said it is helping clients move to new enterprise data centers by focusing on best practices around virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

iDataPlex will be available in the US and Canada in June and globally by the end of the year.