IBM preps up for analytics, cloud with new servers

BANGALORE, INDIA: In March 2012, IBM launched a range of blade, rack, and tower servers based on Intel's Xeon E5-2600 series processors.

Satyen Vyas, vice president, System X, IBM SA/India, in an interaction with Deepa Damodaran of CIOL talks about how the company is prepping itself for the analytics, cloud and optimized workload era.

CIOL: Which are the new server lines?

Satyen Vyas: IBM launched a line of Intel platform based servers under its M4 series.

They are: IBM’S Blade server HS23 — a blade server for virtualization and cloud solutions. The HS23 supports the new eight-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family that processes up to 16 simultaneous threads.

It has fast memory throughout and integrated RAID-0. Select configurations of the HS23 are part of the IBM Express Portfolio designed to meet the needs of small and mid-size businesses.

IBM System x3650 and x3450 M4 - Rack servers, which cater to workloads of all types.

These come with a pay-as-you-grow design to help lower costs and manage risks. With more computing power per watt, support for the latest Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors and advanced memory support, the x3550 M4 offers balanced performance and density.

IBM System x3500 M4 - Tower server for small office, and mid market. Its design supports more cores, memory, and data capacity in a scalable Tower or 5U Rack package.

IBM System x iDataPlex dx360 M4 — For HPC and deep computing requirement. It is designed to optimize density and performance within typical data centre infrastructure limits.

CIOL: How are IBM’s products unique from its competitor products? 

Satyen Vyas: One of differentiating technologies is the xFlash technology, which was only available on IBM’s higher end servers on core processors, servers with four processors or eight processors. Now we are bringing this technology to the mainstream servers, which are the two-way rack servers.

Another technology is Smart Cloud Offering. This cloud management software is a pre-integrated part of BladeCenter foundation for Cloud. This is currently integrated with our server offering.

They also come with 10Gbps virtual fabric technology which makes it powerful to help customers manage virtual set-up.

CIOL: Is Big Data Analytics really happening as of now? 

Satyen Vyas: There are a lot of customers, today, who are beginning to look at analytics as a key play. I believe that analytics is going to be a big play in Indian industry. It has already begun and will grow.

CIOL: IBM has always been on the expensive side. How are your new products priced?

Satyen Vyas: IBM is not expensive but offers more value. At the time when we are moving in to virtualization and cloud technologies, same hardware can deliver more performance for the customers and our products are designed to deliver lower cost of ownership.

In tow with the requirement to bring down data centre power and cooling charges, we design more power efficient servers. In a long term, ROI is higher, more performance and hence the capability to take on more workload. 

CIOL: You launched the product in March, how has been the uptake so far?

Satyen Vyas: We have sold our servers in last two months, including the deep computing product called iDataPlex dx360 M4. We see a good market for products with high performance computing, power and cooling capabilities. 

So, interest in the market is definitely shaping up and we are very excited.

We are looking at signing one of the largest high-performance computing deals in the industry.