IBM Pureflex System: the Next Smart Step in Enterprise IT Evo- Lution

Marketplace Update November 2012 IBM PureFlex System: The Next Smart Step in Enterprise IT Evo- lution By Charles King, Pund-IT, Inc. Pund-IT, Inc. Contact: Hayward, CA Office: 510-383-6767 U.S.A. 94541 Mobile: 510-909-0750 [email protected] www.pund-it.com IBM PureFlex System: The Next Smart Step in Enterprise IT Evolution By Charles King, Pund-IT, Inc. Introduction For decades, corporate IT has been driven by two parallel, though not always complemen- tary, evolutionary trends: 1) the appearance of essentially new computing technologies and form factors, and 2) the steady expansion of business processes and use cases to which IT is applied. The chain of events that led to the appearance of mainframe, then scale-up Unix, then scale-out x86 systems offers one example of this transformation. So does the arrival of solutions which presage customer requirements, such as the development of highly flexible, integrated and compact blade server systems. More recently, these same trends have been manifested in two new classes of IT products—cloud computing infrastructures and workload- or application-optimized systems and appliances. The former tend to leverage highly virtualized commodity server, storage and networking components and streamlined management tools. That makes them ideal for the easy deployment and quick integration that are so valuable in cloud data centers where rapid growth and flexible resource allocation play key roles. The latter cases often incorporate many of the same commodity hardware components, along with finely tuned middleware and application stacks which are factory- or client- integrated for particular workloads. Many such solutions are developed for emerging chal- lenges, like IBM‘s Netezza data analytics offerings. But some vendors are taking the con- cept considerably farther by focusing on vertically-integrated ―stacks‖ which, though they sometimes offer compelling performance, tend to be costly and lock customers into long term commitments. So is there a better, more effective approach? Actually, yes—IBM‘s new PureSystems leverage the value of the company‘s proven system designs and components against its decades of experience in system integration and management. IBM PureSystems are ―expert integrated systems‖ designed to combine the flexibility of general purpose servers, the elasticity of cloud and the simplicity of appliances tuned for specific workloads. IBM‘s PureSystems offerings are deeply-optimized, pre-integrated solutions specifically designed to support key business applications and processes, as well as evolving IT Note: This report was developed by Pund-IT, Inc. with IBM assistance and funding. This report may utilize in- formation, including publicly available data, provided by various companies and sources, including IBM. The opinions are those of the report’s author, and do not necessarily represent IBM’s position. 2 infrastructures, including cloud computing. The members of IBM‘s PureSystems family are: IBM PureFlex System—Combines compute, storage, networking, virtualization and management into a single infrastructure system that is expert at sensing and anticipat- ing the resources required to optimize an IT infrastructure. IBM PureApplication System—A workload-aware, flexible platform designed and tuned specifically for transactional web and database applications. IBM PureData System—An optimized, integrated platform exclusively for delivering data services – a ―big data‖ engine for transactional applications and for analytics. Underpinning the family is IBM Flex System—The building block components of PureSys- tems that allow customers to acquire and build their own custom tuned solutions. Flex System goes beyond blades, offering a flexible, open environment, designed for the next decade of technology. Along with delivering superior performance and measurably improving time to value, IBM‘s PureSystems family represents a new class of IT solutions which have been designed from the ground up for the well-being and peace of mind of customers, not their IT vendors. Status Quo—The Once and Future Data Center Challenge Simply put, supporting the data center status quo is crippling IT today and strangling hopes of capturing future benefits. Numerous projections suggest that nearly three quar- ters of the $3.5T spent annually on IT budgets worldwide are spent just keeping the lights on in data centers. Partly as a result of that, it is estimated that IT backlogs can run up to 18 months and that about a fifth of new data center projects fail from the get-go. But while those numbers are shocking, the problem is actually more insidious. Companies are so used to this state of affairs that long wait times for projects to get up and running have become an acceptable practice, as is over-provisioning (buying more product than required) to ensure organizations will have as much performance, capacity and/or bandwidth as they need. As a result, creating custom solutions to make the best use of whatever is on hand becomes the order of the day, layering additional complexity onto already overly complicated IT environments. But given the quick pace of change that most companies experience, the value of customized proprietary solutions tends to erode ever more rapidly. So what do organizations actually want? How about easy-to-deploy systems with better op- tions, deeper integration, greater native performance and robust capacity/bandwidth? How about solutions with simplified yet highly effective automated management tools? How about working with vendors whose products deliver improved time to value today but are also flexible and adaptable enough to meet constantly changing requirements tomorrow? Those are the principles IBM addressed in the development of its new expert integrated PureSystems family, including the PureFlex System and PureApplication System offerings. 3 Why IBM? Before looking at the IBMPureFlex System in detail, let‘s consider the company‘s overall sit- uation and why so many enterprises have come to depend on IBM as a trusted vendor. First, we would cite IBM‘s notable experience/expertise in virtually all phases of enterprise hardware, software, system and infrastructure management and facilities solutions and services development. Along with the market leadership positions of its Power Systems and System z mainframes, the company‘s x86-based System x servers have consistently deliv- ered superior performance. Additionally, IBM invests far more in R&D (averaging $6B annually) than its major competitors and has been the top patent recipient among U.S. companies for the past 19 years. Finally, IBM has a long history of close, successful partnerships with vendors of every sort, including competitors such as Oracle and HP, to support the needs of mutual customers. The result? Along with essentially defining enterprise IT, IBM has become a favored destina- tion for enterprise customers that have become dissatisfied with other vendors. IBM PureFlex System—The Smarter Difference Given those inherent strengths, what does IBM hope to accomplish with its new PureFlex System? IBM certainly understands the value of learning from the past and maximally lever- aging new technologies, including Intel‘s latest ―Sandy Bridge‖ Xeon E5-2400 and IBM POWER7, and POWER7+ CPUs. But it also recognizes that the ―buy it/build it‖ model many companies use when acquiring and deploying new systems is essentially hindering both IT and business goals. The questions then become: 1) what computing/business problems do enterprise customers need to address, and 2) what would a successful solution look like? A simple answer to the former point is: ease, speed, functionality and automation. In short, companies want systems that are simple to acquire, deploy, manage and support, but which deliver top line performance, can be easily integrated into their current environments and are also adaptable to evolving processes and needs. That means that rather than requiring over-provisioning, systems instead can scale automatically for new workloads. Plus, instead of the rat‘s nest of multiple tools and dashboards so common in heter- ogeneous systems, ideal solutions would offer a single point of management for compute, storage, networking, software and services. These systems would then deliver both significantly faster time to value and improved lifecycle management. So how can a vendor meet those stringent requirements? IBM knows that deep integration is the only way to achieve reliably robust performance, along with built-in workload elasticity and scalability. In addition, integration can help speed acquisi- tion and deployment processes, and support automated management tools and features. So in the new IBM PureFlex System, the company has basically taken what were once custom solutions and turned them into standard SKUs. Recognizing the need for a system ar- chitecture with capabilities appropriate for new and emerging workloads, IBM invested over 4 $2 billion in PureSystems, including related acquisitions and R&D. As a result, the new offerings, including the IBM PureFlex System, leverage the company‘s considerable experience at developing and integrating hardware and software at the deepest levels. Plus, built- in ―expertise‖ significantly enhances the new systems‘ ability to address increasingly com- plex and critical business and operational tasks. The IBM PureFlex System is available in three basic configurations (Express, Standard and Enterprise) and can be ordered with Expert

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