IBM Rolls Out 55 Infrastructure Products

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IBM kicked the day off with a bang Wednesday when it announced 55 new and expanded products for data center infrastructure, with products in the areas of business analytics, storage management, and virtualization, as well as in cloud computing.

In business analytics, IBM (NYSE: IBM) launched its DB2 Analytics Accelerator, which integrates IBM’s Netezza data warehouse appliance into the IBM zEnterprise System, enabling online transaction processing (OLTP) to be merged with business analytics as a single platform, the company said.

The warehouse appliance integrates with IBM’s DB2 for z/OS database on zEnterprise 196 (or z114) and is designed to increase response time for intensive analytics, according to an IBM statement.

Additionally, IBM Smart Analytics System 9700 and IBM Smart Analytics System 9710 provide end-to-end data warehouse and business intelligence solutions on IBM’s zEnterprise System.

Meanwhile, IBM Smart Analytics System 7710 for Power7 and x86-based IBM Smart Analytics System 5710 are meant to deliver single server, all-in-one systems for business analytics and reporting services.

In storage, Big Blue announced updates to the Storwize V7000 Unified midrange disk system, which aims to simplify data management by handling both file and block storage on the same system. Besides automatic file transfer to desired drive types, the system can scale within a system or scale out by clustering a pair of systems, IBM said.

The update Release 6.2 of IBM System Storage DS8000 provides an enterprise disk system designed to let administrators manage diverse workloads automatically.

“[In addition] Easy Tier enhancements include automated data migration across three-tiers of storage, as well as automated data rebalancing within a single tier,” the statement said.

In other updates, IBM’s XIV Storage System Gen3 enterprise disk system, which the company introduced last summer, has been upgraded to support 3 TB disks, effectively increasing storage by half, and increasing usable capacity up to 243 TB per rack.

Among new and updated virtualization products, IBM PowerSC provides automated tools for managing security and compliance for virtualized environments using Power Systems running on IBM’s PowerVM virtualization product.

Further, IBM z/VM 6.2 adds the ability to cluster as many as four instances of v/ZM into a single system image.

Following on the heels of Big Blue’s announcement in mid-October of its SmartCloud enterprise storage services, as well as SmartCloud cloud services, the company also rolled out other members of the SmartCloud family.

For instance, IBM announced SmartCloud Entry for constructing private clouds on virtualized IBM System x and Power Systems, as well as zEnterprise Starter Edition for Cloud, which is meant to provide customers with an entry-level infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud delivery offering for Linux on System z and using Tivoli Provisioning Manager, the statement added.

Likewise, IBM’s BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud, enables customers to build x86-based virtualization environments — it’s available in a range of sizes.

Among other products, IBM’s Active Cloud Engine aims to help efficiently scale cloud file systems by transferring files where and when they are needed, providing fast access to billions of files and improving management and efficiency of cloud storage.

“Capabilities for global clouds are available on IBM Scale-Out Network Attached Storage R 1.3 (SONAS) and for mid-sized clouds on Storwize V7000 Unified systems,” the company said.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.