Information Builders Webfocus on IBM Linux on Power Servers Business Analytics Solutions That Empower Accurate Decision-Making in a Big Data World

IBM Systems and Technology Group IBM Power Systems Solution Brief

Information Builders WebFOCUS on IBM Linux on Power servers Business analytics solutions that empower accurate decision-making in a big data world

The explosion of data in this world is almost beyond description; 2.5 Highlights quintillion bytes of data are created every day, which is 10 million to the fifth power. And the volume of data being gathered is still expanding. • Access massive volumes of data Data sources are also enormously varied with analog sensors that gather

• Consolidate and virtualize environments climate, oceanic and geological information; social media posts, online on a single server digital pictures and videos; web-based purchase transactions; moving maps driven by global positioning system (GPS) signals and more. • Reduce IT staff and administrative resources dedicated to building reports This trend is not lost on business leaders, who know they must find • Process high volumes of queries more ways to glean better insights from all this big data through business efficiently with less hardware intelligence (BI) and analytics. Any way you look at it, organizations • Enable faster rollout of new applications are facing mountains of data and the need to make sense of it to help drive organizational performance. • Transform big data into actionable information WebFOCUS is a leader in transforming data into decisions The unparalleled scalability and flexibility built into Information Builders WebFOCUS provides a virtually unlimited number of users with instant access to critical business information. It meets the broadest range of demands for disparate users—from executives and managers to employees, analysts and power users—making intuitive, real-time reports available anywhere, in any format. The software accesses and integrates structured and unstructured data, ensuring that your organization keeps pace with growing amounts of incoming data. The data must be better understood to glean vital information that leads to timely decisions that allow the company to surpass its near- term and longer-range business goals. IBM Systems and Technology Group IBM Power Systems Solution Brief

Linux on Power and WebFOCUS memory bandwidth, I/O and smart acceleration. These Power — a powerful match Systems extend resiliency, availability and security for big data Linux® is an incredible, efficient, malleable operating system. and analytics and scale to perform in the most demanding Linux has become a reliable alternative operating system data requirements. among IT professionals. With it, businesses can save millions through reduced support and maintenance costs. Linux is also Linux on Power and WebFOCUS deploy quickly. IBM Power appealing because of its provisioning, reliability and flexibility Systems for Linux and supporting systems help provide in the powerful IBM® Power Systems™ hardware. Together, customers with decreased deployment time and costs to go IBM and Information Builders deliver cost-effective, efficient along with greater performance, dependability and workload and state-of-the-art analytics solutions for their joint customers. density than competitive x86 platforms. WebFOCUS uses the Information Builders excels at big data analytics with its cost efficiency of Linux and virtualization for business-critical WebFOCUS BI offering and because IBM Power Systems workloads, such as business analytics. servers are tailor-made for big data, they provide an ideal An effective BI environment must be able to scale easily and cost platform for Information Builders solutions. This combination effectively to meet new and expanding business requirements. helps companies reduce licensing cost and manage growth of The environment should use a server-based architecture to their IT organizations, which allows for scaling up as the use simplify software maintenance, streamline report distribution, of WebFOCUS merits. It also uses databases, social media, ease query and analysis and minimize network activity. And, it customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource must process requests efficiently to avoid spiraling hardware and planning (ERP) and other applications for business analytics. maintenance costs. Power Systems for Linux and WebFOCUS The scalability of WebFOCUS on Linux on Power means scale instantly. more users can access all their essential reports within sub- seconds of issuing the request to the database. Linux on Power and WebFOCUS are flexible, deploying the components of WebFOCUS Portal, Report Bursting or Optimizing WebFOCUS on Linux on Power Alert Based conditions you want and access data quickly IBM Linux on Power and WebFOCUS help you save on IT and intuitively. They scale from 10 users to 1,000,000 users costs. Most companies spend a large percentage of their IT and impact decision-making immediately. budgets on their IT workforces. Thus, the more quickly a solution can be developed and deployed, the less money an Linux on Power and WebFOCUS are easy to use: Although organization has to spend overall. In addition, using software TCO is an essential metric for calculating the success of a BI solutions that incorporate tools that are familiar to the user project; you must also consider less tangible aspects, such as base, such as a web browser, decreases the learning curve easier access to information, better dissemination of knowledge and simplifies adoption of the tool, helping lower total cost of and increased productivity for workers throughout the organization. ownership (TCO). IBM offers Linux only Power Systems These intangibles not only help build the success of a BI project, priced to provide more scalable alternatives to commodity but also are a sure indication of how critical the BI initiative x86 scale-out options, reducing TCO even further. has become to organizations.

IBM POWER8™ accelerates business insight. IBM Power WebFOCUS on Power Systems benchmark Systems with the POWER8 processor and architecture are A benchmark of the WebFOCUS reporting server on Linux designed to deal with the demands of big data. Built to bring on Power demonstrates outstanding performance and scalability insights to the point of impact, these Power Systems servers of the solution. are the ideal platform for WebFOCUS with computing power,

2 IBM Systems and Technology Group IBM Power Systems Solution Brief

Performance test environment WebFOCUS has superior scalability on POWER8 as number Reporting server: of cores is increased. As a result, Power System servers can scale WebFOCUS Server 8.1 and IBM DB2® Client 9.7 FP 9 to handle more user reports per server than x86 servers. Java™ version 1.5.0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago) IBM POWER S824 LPAR with 8 core 4.1 GHz IBM

POWER8 POWER8 Intel Linux Intel Windows 50 GB RAM 1 x1 Gb Ethernet 180 160 1 x300 GB SAN V7000 LUN 140 Database server: POWER8 Intel Linux Intel Windows 120 IBM DB2 Enterprise Server 9.7 Fixpack 9 100 Java version 1.5.0 180 80 AIX 7.1 TL03 SP03 160 14060 IBM Power S824 LPAR2 8 core 4.1 GHz POWER8 Reports per Second 12040 50 GB RAM 10020 1x1 GB Ethernet 800 1 x300 GB SAN V7000 LUN (OS) 25 50 100 200 60

1 x300 GB SAN V7000 LUN (Database) Reports per Second 40 Concurrent Users Workload: 20 Complex WebFOCUS Report – 5,567 Rows 0 25 50 100 200 Large WebFOCUS Report – 3,000 Rows Figure 1: Large Report Throughput with 8 Cores POWER8 versus Intel Small WebFOCUS Report – 60 Rows POWER8 ConcurrentIntel Linux UsersIntel Windows Test approach 1.0 Tests were performed with 2, 4 and 8 cores. For each given test 0.8 configuration, Information Builders used the same parameter POWER8 Intel Linux Intel Windows settings, such as interval time and keep alive time to run 0.6 workload by varying the number of concurrent active users. 1.0 Information Builders then measured the end-to-end user 0.4 0.8 response time and throughput. (sec) times 0.2

Request processing Request 0.6 Test results 0.0 Results from this POWER8 performance benchmark were 0.4 25 50 100 200 ® compared with tests conducted on x86 servers with Intel (sec) times Concurrent Users processors1 demonstrating the performance advantages 0.2 Request processing Request POWER8 gives to WebFOCUS. Figure 1 shows Linux on 0.0 Power has better throughput than x86 producing approximately 25 50 100 200 twice the number of large reports per second. Figure 2 Concurrent Users demonstrates the response time advantages of running

WebFOCUS on Power Systems with POWER8 processors. POWER8 Intel Linux Intel Windows POWER8 generates small WebFOCUS reports in approximately Figure 2: Report Processing Times with 8 Cores for WebFOCUS on half the time as Linux on x86 and less a quarter of the time POWER8 900versus Intel than Microsoft® Windows® on x86. Figure 3 demonstrates 800 700 POWER8 Intel Linux Intel Windows 600

900500 800400 3 700300 600200 Reports per Second 500100 0 400 2 Cores 4 Cores 8 Cores 300 200 Number of Cores

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Reports per Second September 2014 100 0 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, AIX, DB2, Power Systems and 2 Cores 4 Cores 8 Cores POWER8 are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other Number of Cores product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at Figure 3: Scalability of Small Reports with Increased Cores on POWER8 versus Intel www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Why Linux on Power Power Systems for Linux big data solutions are deeply optimized from the Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. hardware to the Linux operating system and the IBM software offerings. IBM is in a unique position to use two decades of Linux and open-source Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. experience, as well as IBM research technologies and hardware expertise starting from the microprocessor. IBM has invested more than USD one Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. billion in the Linux and open source community and has committed an additional USD one billion investment in Linux on Power. IBM is consistently This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are among the top commercial contributors of Linux code, with more than 600 available in every country in which IBM operates. IBM developers2 involved in over 100 open-source projects and thousands of dedicated development and support personnel supporting all of the IBM THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, products and customers on Linux. IBM not only supports this community, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT but is also a part of it. ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON- IBM has completed tens of thousands of Linux customer engagements and INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according facilitated thousands of migrations to Linux. IBM offers a wide range of to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which hardware, middleware and services products for Linux. IBM supports Linux they are provided. on all modern IBM Systems and backs up Linux on Power with a full 1 The Linux Foundation, Linux Kernel Development line of implementation, support and migration services. http://go.linuxfoundation.org/e/6342/ho-writes-linux- 2012/879kf/221839922, March 2012 For more information 2 Reporting Server: CPU: Intel -Each core Hyperthreaded Clock Speed: 2.93 GHz, Cent OS Linux Server (atscentos6) / To learn more about Information Builders and IBM Power Systems for Windows Server 2012 R2, RAM: 96 GB WebFOCUS Linux, contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, Reporting Server 8 Database Server: MS SQL Server 2008 on or visit the following websites: ibm.com/partnerworld/Linux on Power and Windows 2008 Server R2 on 12 Cores Hyperthreaded Each core with Clock speed 3.07 GHz RAM: 64 GB www.informationbuilders.com/solutions/ibm

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