Five Minute Briefing - Data Center
April 30, 2012
Five Minute Briefing - Data Center: April 30, 2012. Published in conjunction with SHARE Inc., a bi-weekly report geared to the needs of data center professionals.
Linux News
Scott Handy, vice president, STG Strategy and Business Development, PowerLinux, IBM, lays out the value proposition for IBM PowerLinux solutions in his new blog post: On April 24, IBM announced IBM PowerLinux solutions, built on a new Linux-only family of servers. These two-socket servers - one rack-mount and one compute node - run industry standard Linux, and have been tuned to run key emerging workloads like big data and open source network infrastructure. With these new offerings, IBM is taking Power's well-known strengths in scalability, flexibility, and security and making them available to customers that might not previously have thought of Power as an option. Now, quite simply, IBM is taking pricing off the table.
News Flashes
Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc. (ASCI) unveiled the latest version of its IT automation software, which includes capabilities to join both reactive and predictive forms of resource management to optimize Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Version 9.0 of ASCI's ActiveBatch Workload Automation and Job Scheduling Software is expected to ship in June.
BMC Software, a provider of business service management solutions), released what it calls one of the industry's first application performance "management-as-a-service" solutions for cloud applications. BMC End User Experience Management OnDemand measures and monitors individual user performance, errors and availability of web applications and provides a more accurate and actionable approach to service-level assurance for the cloud.
FalconStor Software, a provider of disk-based data protection, released the latest version of its virtual tape library (VTL) offering, which includes an expanded set of deduplication methods and improved performance. FalconStor VTL 7.5 is intended to provide customers the flexibility to optimize backup for speed and efficiency by tailoring deduplication processes to the needs of their environment while delivering twice the deduplication rate of any competing solution.
IBM introduced a series of new Linux-based systems and solutions intended to help companies exploit the cost efficiency of Linux and virtualization for business-critical workloads. The new offerings, dubbed IBM PowerLinux Systems and Solutions, offer integration of new Linux-specific POWER7 processor-based hardware with Linux software from Red Hat and SUSE for analyzing big data, managing industry-specific applications and delivering open source infrastructure services.
IBM announced an overall 7% jump in profitability in the first quarter of 2012 over the previous year, but hardware and server revenues lagged. The company's net income for the quarter was $3.1 billion, compared with $2.9 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Total revenues for the first quarter of 2012 of $24.7 billion were flat (up 1%, adjusting for currency) from the first quarter of 2011.
Progress Software Corporation announced a new strategic focus in which it will become a provider of a next-generation, context-aware application development and deployment platform in the cloud for the application platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) market, by beefing up investments in its core OpenEdge, DataDirect Connect, and Apama Analytics and Decisions products and integrating them into a single offering. As part of the plan, Progress says it will divest multiple product lines that are not core to the new vision and launch immediate operational restructuring initiatives to significantly reduce annual costs.
STORServer, a provider of data backup solutions for the mid-market, announced four major product upgrades to its line of data backup appliances. The company has introduced a new BA Series Backup Appliance; updated the Enterprise Backup Appliance (EBA) line; enhanced pricing on Instant Restore (IR) Appliances; and is offering stand-alone sales of STORServer Console (SSC). As a result, the company, which sells exclusively through a reseller channel, says it now offers a backup appliance for every budget and environment.
News From SHARE
The vibe surrounding cloud computing at SHARE in Atlanta was all about forgetting the hype and dealing with reality. Attendees came looking for results after hearing for years about the computing model that reduces costs while increasing flexibility and scalability. Veteran tech journalist Pedro Pereira discusses the cloud computing content at SHARE in Atlanta in the SHARE's President's Corner.
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