IBM has had a busy week, with announcements about cloud, tape storage, and even giving Watson a personality! So let’s have a look at what’s being said.
An IBM survey (produced by the Institute for Business Value) found that global organizations are unprepared for things like cloud computing, analytics, mobile devices, and social media. And guess what? IBM has some new systems, software, and capabilities to help those organizations create smarter infrastructures that will give them faster access to big data insights through the cloud and improved business performance.
IBM recently announced software enabling organizations to access any data from any device and from anywhere in the world, and has added to that with storage announcements. Its Storwize, XIV, tape library, and Flash storage products can optimize storage for large-scale cloud deployments through virtualization, real-time compression, easy-tiering, and mirroring, and provide fast access to information.
IBM’s Storwize V7000 Unified has been enhanced with new clustering capabilities, real-time compression, and Active Cloud Engine to help customers manage growing amounts of data. The system also supports 4 petabytes (twice the storage capacity of previous models).
IBM’s XIV Cloud Storage for Service Providers provides a pay-per-use pricing model for business partners that reduces the initial cost of the system. New features demoed included XIV multi-tenancy, enhanced data security, and improved cloud economics through the partition of XIV storage into logical domains assigned to distinct tenants.
The TS4500 Tape Library enables large-scale cloud deployments with a data architecture that maintains high utilization and can back up three times more cloud data in the same footprint. And the IBM DS8870 Flash enclosure provides up to three and one-half times faster flash performance requiring 50 percent less space and 12 percent less energy.
IBM has launched IBM Cloudmanager with Openstack that can be downloaded from its Marketplace like any other application. It’s based on IBM Cloudentry, and includes full access to Icehouse, the latest version of Openstack. It can also be bought as part of a package with the IBM Power Systems server range to form the IBM Power Systems Solution Edition for Scale Out Cloud.
IBM also has IBM Flex System X6 compute nodes and IBM Flex System x880 X6 eight-socket, x480 X6 four-socket, and x280 X6 two-socket compute nodes. These nodes include modular blade design that enables seamless scalability without ‘rip and replace’ as analytic workloads increase.
The IBM System x3100 M5 is a new, compact, tower server equipped with the latest Intel Xeon E3-1200v3 processors for increased performance, and four levels of RAID for enhanced data protection.
The IBM PureFlex Solution for Parallels allows managed service providers to integrate Web, IaaS, SaaS, and core services for their clients on the Parallels Automation software platform.
IBM also announced cloud-based offerings (Software as a Service) for IBM Concert, IBM Project Catalyst, and OpenPages. IBM Concert provides a way to make budgeting, planning, and forecasting software more accessible to sales, marketing, and incentive-compensation decision makers. Project Catalyst provides advanced analytics capabilities to everyone. OpenPages provides governance, risk-management, and compliance application as a managed service on SoftLayer
Meanwhile, IBM and Fujifilm have demoed a 154TB LTO-size tape cartridge. The density developments rely on smaller magnetic particles, narrower tracks, meaning more tracks on a half-inch-wide tape, and better read:write heads to follow and read/write to/from these tracks.
And finally, in a busy week of announcements, IBM’s Watson group has acquired Cognea, an Australian-founded start-up that makes virtual assistants for enterprise customers. They say that the Watson Platform will fit into the “cognitive era of computing” where people have conversations with machines that are able to understand natural language. IBM has brought in Cognea to offer a range of personalities for Watson, “from suit-and-tie formal to kid-next-door friendly”. The acquisition furthers IBM’s plan to make Watson a development platform available to the enterprise, start-ups, and universities.
Showing posts with label Storwize V7000. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Storwize V7000. Show all posts
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Monday, 18 June 2012
Being a good sport
Love it or hate it, here in the UK it’s a summer of sport. At the moment the Euro 2012 football competition is in its early stages, then we have Wimbledon, and August is dominated by the Olympics and Paralympics.
IBM has great plans for Wimbledon, and has been showing off some of its technology at the French Open tennis championship. IBM’s SlamTracker maps a match in real-time and highlights the key turning points. The predictive analytics software determines which three things any top player needs to do to enhance their chances of winning. So, for example, you might see something like: “win more than 46% of points on second serve”, or “win more than 51% of 3-8 shot rallies”.
IBM has redesigned the Wimbledon Web site for 2012. It has also provided an upgraded radio, TV, and video broadcast services known as Live@Wimbledon, and studio discussions shown on the website can now ‘drop in’ on live matches at key moments.
It seems that in 2011 there were 451 million visitors to the Wimbledon Web site, of which 28% were using mobile devices. This year IBM expects more than 500m visits. IBM’s senior IT specialist, David Provan, says: “With advanced analytics, such as those embedded in the SlamTracker at Wimbledon, organizations can tackle the explosion in data”.
IBM probably doesn’t need to use Wimbledon to raise its corporate profile with sport fans because, according to consultancy Futerra, it is what they call a “planet brand”. Futerra assessed which brands had the greatest recognition and loyalty, a global reach, and the most impressive green. Their Planet Brands Index drew on in-house Futerra research, data from studies published by Millward Brown and Interbrand, Newsweek’s annual Green Rankings, and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. As well as IBM, the 100 names included Google, Apple, Samsung, and Amazon.
IBM has also been involved in its favourite sport of beating Oracle. It seems that IBM’s Storwize V7000, storage array, has beaten an Oracle/Sun ZFS array by delivering almost the same performance for less than half the price and 4 percent of the capacity.
The devices were tested using the SPC-1 benchmark, which tests the performance of a storage array doing mainly random I/O in a business environment. The two teams involved were an IBM Storwize V7000, fitted with 18 x 200GB SSDs in a mirrored configuration, versus an Oracle Sun ZFS 7420 with 84TB of mirrored disk storage with single read and write accelerating SSDs.
And the final score: IBM delivered 120,492.34 SPC-1 IOPS, at a cost of $181,029, ie $1.50/IOPS; Oracle delivered 137,066 SPC-1 IOPS, at a cost of $409,933, ie $2.99/IOPS. Without using SlamTracker, you can see that IBM’s hardware delivered 88 percent of the Oracle box’s performance for 44 percent of the price with 4.3 per cent of the capacity.
When it comes to supercomputers, IBM is now back in the lead. IBM’s Sequoia is officially the world’s fastest supercomputer. In second place in Japan is Fujitsu’s K Computer. IBM lost its top spot to China a couple of years ago, but it’s now back at the top of the leader board.
Keeping up the sporting theme: Desert Mountain, a golf and residential community in Arizona, is planning to install IBM Intelligent Operations Center software for Smarter Cities, with UgMO Technologies’ Wireless Soil Moisture Sensor Solution, to manage irrigation of all six of its golf courses. And it expects this will reduce its water use by 10 percent and generate an additional 10 percent savings in energy costs related to water pumping and distribution.
Anyway, let’s hope the competitiveness of the Fortune 500 companies rubs off on the athletes this summer and we have really competitive, drug-free, sport, which the fans will talk about for years to come.
IBM has great plans for Wimbledon, and has been showing off some of its technology at the French Open tennis championship. IBM’s SlamTracker maps a match in real-time and highlights the key turning points. The predictive analytics software determines which three things any top player needs to do to enhance their chances of winning. So, for example, you might see something like: “win more than 46% of points on second serve”, or “win more than 51% of 3-8 shot rallies”.
IBM has redesigned the Wimbledon Web site for 2012. It has also provided an upgraded radio, TV, and video broadcast services known as Live@Wimbledon, and studio discussions shown on the website can now ‘drop in’ on live matches at key moments.
It seems that in 2011 there were 451 million visitors to the Wimbledon Web site, of which 28% were using mobile devices. This year IBM expects more than 500m visits. IBM’s senior IT specialist, David Provan, says: “With advanced analytics, such as those embedded in the SlamTracker at Wimbledon, organizations can tackle the explosion in data”.
IBM probably doesn’t need to use Wimbledon to raise its corporate profile with sport fans because, according to consultancy Futerra, it is what they call a “planet brand”. Futerra assessed which brands had the greatest recognition and loyalty, a global reach, and the most impressive green. Their Planet Brands Index drew on in-house Futerra research, data from studies published by Millward Brown and Interbrand, Newsweek’s annual Green Rankings, and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. As well as IBM, the 100 names included Google, Apple, Samsung, and Amazon.
IBM has also been involved in its favourite sport of beating Oracle. It seems that IBM’s Storwize V7000, storage array, has beaten an Oracle/Sun ZFS array by delivering almost the same performance for less than half the price and 4 percent of the capacity.
The devices were tested using the SPC-1 benchmark, which tests the performance of a storage array doing mainly random I/O in a business environment. The two teams involved were an IBM Storwize V7000, fitted with 18 x 200GB SSDs in a mirrored configuration, versus an Oracle Sun ZFS 7420 with 84TB of mirrored disk storage with single read and write accelerating SSDs.
And the final score: IBM delivered 120,492.34 SPC-1 IOPS, at a cost of $181,029, ie $1.50/IOPS; Oracle delivered 137,066 SPC-1 IOPS, at a cost of $409,933, ie $2.99/IOPS. Without using SlamTracker, you can see that IBM’s hardware delivered 88 percent of the Oracle box’s performance for 44 percent of the price with 4.3 per cent of the capacity.
When it comes to supercomputers, IBM is now back in the lead. IBM’s Sequoia is officially the world’s fastest supercomputer. In second place in Japan is Fujitsu’s K Computer. IBM lost its top spot to China a couple of years ago, but it’s now back at the top of the leader board.
Keeping up the sporting theme: Desert Mountain, a golf and residential community in Arizona, is planning to install IBM Intelligent Operations Center software for Smarter Cities, with UgMO Technologies’ Wireless Soil Moisture Sensor Solution, to manage irrigation of all six of its golf courses. And it expects this will reduce its water use by 10 percent and generate an additional 10 percent savings in energy costs related to water pumping and distribution.
Anyway, let’s hope the competitiveness of the Fortune 500 companies rubs off on the athletes this summer and we have really competitive, drug-free, sport, which the fans will talk about for years to come.
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