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Experton Group Weekly IT News

HP Thermal Logic and IBM Information Management Moves

By: Cal Braunstein

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) unveiled its portfolio for energy efficient data centers, called thermal logic, which includes new hardware, software, and services offerings. Meanwhile IBM Corp.  enhanced its InfoSphere and Optim software, solidDB Universal Cache, and two storage products.

Focal Points:

• As part of its green initiative, HP launched its Thermal Logic program, which contains a portfolio of technologies designed to reduce total energy usage, reclaim "trapped" energy capacity, and extend the life of a data center. One component is a new server, the HP ProLiant BL460c G5, which is redesigned to be 15 – 25 percent more efficient than the BL460c enclosure. The new HP 2400W high efficiency power supply has a 90 percent and higher efficiency rating starting at eight percent load. HP's Dynamic Power Capping solution controls maximum server and enclosure power so that power capacity can be reclaimed for usage elsewhere within the data center. It continuously monitors power consumption, safely limits power usage, and has no performance impact, HP assets. HP is also offering energy efficiency services to assist with analysis and design of a data center, HVAC high density environments, and U.S. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the European equivalent (BREEAM) designs.
• IBM is offering new functionality within InfoSphere Master Data Management (MDM) Server that combines it with key components of IBM InfoSphere Information Server to provide pre-defined data integration and cleansing logic. IBM has also more tightly integrated InfoSphere with Cognos 8. IBM's Integrated Data Management (IDM) software has been expanded with 10 new Optim offerings that will become available in the fourth quarter. The Optim line was added to the IBM portfolio when the company acquired Princeton Softech. The IBM solidDB Universal Cache, relational, in-memory database now supports IBM's DB2 and Informix Dynamic Server, Microsoft Corp. SQL Server, Oracle Corp.'s Oracle database and Sybase Inc.'s database. Release 6.3 will be out in December 2008 with support for DB2, IDS, Oracle, and Sybase. Support for SQL Server will be available in 1Q 2009.
• IBM's System Storage DR550 has been enhanced with RAID 6 capabilities. RAID 6 is designed to make DR550 more reliable and safe as a data storage appliance, as it tolerates two simultaneous hard disk drive failures by storing two sets of distributed parities. The DR550 provides non-erasable, non-rewriteable storage to keep retention-managed data on disk and tape. The device supports 1TB SATA disk drives and 1TB tape cartridges to provide high capacity at low cost and "green" low energy consumption. The IBM System Storage N6000 series, unveiled in August 2008, has been expanded to support data de-duplication, a mixed disk logical unit number (LUN) feature, a performance accelerator, and a four port, 4 GB/sec target adapter. Advanced capacity storage expansion units are also available with 450 GB 15K fibre channel drives and SAS disk drives.

Experton Group believes companies are looking to preferred providers to assist them in creating energy efficient data centers to meet corporate financial and social responsibility objectives. HP and IBM are aggressively pursuing these opportunities and, given their leadership positions and Dell Inc.'s and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s struggles, they will expand their footprints, market and wallet shares at the others' expense. IT executives should seek assistance in designing their new data centers from providers such as HP and IBM that have experience in architecting and implementing total data center solutions. Executives should supplement their outreach by working with niche vendors that can specific knowledge in their unique areas, such as cabling, and power and cooling systems.

Experton Group believes enterprises expect vendors to provide integrated software so that enterprises can easily assemble a complete software stack to address a business problem. The move to RAID 6 and away from RAID 5 for non-erasable, non-rewriteable storage devises is a logical one and executives should expect it. IT executives should pressure software providers to offer fully integrated stacks with a limited number of options. Vendors need to stop creating tens or hundreds of separately salable components that require customers to figure out how to configure, integrate, and test but are required in order to build a usable integrated software stack. This may be good for the vendor's bottom line but it does not help to enable customers to perform their jobs effectively. IT executives should lobby vendors to reduce the number of software offerings by repackaging them into more tightly integrated stacks.