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IBM’s x366: like a hurricane

Although the x86 server market is mostly commoditised, IBM’s X3-based servers are anything but commodities, and are helping the company expand its marketshare in the 4-way Xeon space, says Akhtar Pasha.

When IBM introduced its third generation of Enterprise X-Architecture design (or EXA) in Q2 2005, the X3-based eServer xSeries x366 server, it did so without any of the fanfare usually associated with a product launch. Instead, it sent out a clear message that its X3-based x366 server offers significant price-to-performance benefits vis-à-vis earlier generations, eliminating the price discontinuity between two- and four-way servers.

The eServer xSeries

x366 sports the 64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP (code-named Cranford), and the platform's capabilities include support for DDR2-based Active Memory and Active PCI-X 2.0.

Analysts such as Gartner and IDC place a lot of emphasis on 4-way servers and their role in tomorrow's data centres. The 4-way space is now responsible for server consolidation, bringing mission-critical workloads to Intel servers. IBM plans to use the X3 to lower prices in the 4-way Xeon segment.

Many opportunities

The X3-based x366 delivers performance at lower price, offering 46 percent more performance in a four-way server as compared to the previous generation (X2) Anil Sethi General Manager eServer xSeries & IntelliStation IBM India

IBM sees huge opportunity in the 4-way server space. While the industry average growth in 4-way lies between 25-26 percent as per IDC India, IBM is witnessing a 55 percent year-on-year growth in 2005. That’s not all. The company has increased its marketshare from 26 percent in Q1 04 to 31.5 percent in Q1 05. Says Anil Sethi, General Manager, eServer xSeries and IntelliStation, IBM India, “X3-based xSeries x366 servers are helping us gain marketshare in the 4-way space.” Note that the xSeries x366, the first X3 product released during Q2 05, has seen significant market traction. As per market sources, the company has already shipped over a dozen units of x366 servers since then. Tata Motors was the first win for the x366 range in India, and since then IBM has sold these 4-way servers to several organisations including Asian Paints and UTI Bank.

IBM says that X3 is providing high-performance solutions to customers relying on high-volume transactions from their core application. It offers better price-to- performance to handle compute-intensive applications. According to Sethi, "The X3-based x366 delivers performance at lower price, offering 46 percent more performance in a four-way server as compared to the previous generation (X2)." With the X3, it has reduced processor-to-memory latency, which helps speed up data delivery from the main memory to the processor, thereby boosting performance. A single X3-based server can take over the jobs of multiple older servers.

Overall, the X3 is optimised for server consolidation and enterprise application software. It uses IBM’s high-end virtualisation engine technology, the capability IBM has with its power processors. IBM’s X3 architecture offers investment protection for IBM customers with its pay-as-you-grow Intel-based servers, supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit applications on the same platform so that clients can migrate to 64-bit as needed.

The eServer xSeries x366 brings mainframe-inspired capabilities and high-end technology to businesses that want to bring mission-critical workloads to Intel servers. Suitable for the financial and manufacturing sectors, the company states that X3 would be an ideal platform for customers running multi-user, memory-intensive applications such as ERP.

There is another reason why IBM is optimistic about its x366 servers in India. “IBM is bundling three-years maintenance and warranty (warranty includes installation and all parts) upfront. Our customers will not be asked to pay extra,” affirms Sethi. The x366 is available at two weeks notice. The company is selling primarily to manufacturing and oil companies, BPOs, BFSI outfits and research establishments.

Partners’ role

IBM’s business partners are adopting some interesting methods to get new accounts. Says Cherian Thomas, Director, Wysetek Systems Technologies, an IBM business partner, “We have sold IBM’s X3-based x366 servers to customers such as Asian Paints, UTI Bank and Tata Motors, and our strategy is to break into the competition’s space and sell to growing customers as big as Asian Paints.” He adds that this company is using a x366 4-way machine to power its CRM package that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1. UTI Bank is using a x366 server as a RBI gateway server running the Real Time Gross Settlement application. Their business is driven by transaction speed with five nines (99.999 percent) reliability. If the system doesn’t give the required performance, it hampers their settlements.

Remarks Thomas remarks, “We are seeing an upswing in IT investments by verticals such as BFSI, manufacturing and telecom. Our target is to close ten deals in Q3 05, and we have already achieved 50 percent.”

IBM customers are using X3 systems for some interesting applications. According to a source in Tata Motors, the company wanted to speed-up new product development and design more secure vehicles. It also wanted to shrink the time required for executing vehicle simulations. The company is using a x366 server from IBM to overcome the limits of the current 32-bit address space. The new open standards-based system delivers the reliability and performance needed to power simulation. The solution has helped the company to improve time-to-market, and increase simulation model accuracy and staff productivity.

According to Sethi, IBM’s business partners are instrumental in pushing the x366 servers. Customers who are using 2-way 2.6 GHz Xeon servers can pay an additional 12 percent to have a 4-way x366 enterprise-class server. The partners are also responsible for changing the mindset of customers to migrate from a Unix to an Intel platform at a much lesser cost. There are about one hundred partners of IBM who are pitching the x366 and the recently-launched x460 servers.

No support for Itanium

Earlier, IBM’s server chipsets that sported Intel microprocessors supported both Itanium and Xeon processors. The X3, however, does not support Intel’s Itanium and Itanium2 processors because of market acceptance issues. Big Blue’s step away from the Itanium is further evidence that customers generally prefer Intel’s Xeon family, especially since it now includes a 64-bit extension that was previously a major advantage for Itanium. Notes Sethi, “The 8-way market that Itanium is addressing is currently fulfilled by Power and Unix servers. Yet customers do not buy fully populated machines."

IBM’s objective of making a difference in the 4-way 64-bit x86 server market is paying off. The company has made a good beginning, but it needs to be seen how it plans to finish off by 2005-end.

akhtar@expresscomputeronline.com