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Event
Big Blue announces POWER6 box, talks about Green Computing
IBM’s Big Green initiative targets corporate data centers
where energy constraints and costs can limit their ability to grow. The company
also announced its POWER6 series of System P at an international event—Knowledge
is Power 07, Japan. Faiz Askari reports from Japan
 Green
computing’s popularity is waxing, leading many IT giants to think seriously
about this problem. IBM is now applying energy-efficient technology, products,
skills and services to help reduce data center energy consumption and it has
drafted a clear strategy for green computing. Recently, the company had organized
an international event ‘Knowledge Is Power 07’ at Miyazaki, Japan.
The event focused on knowledge sharing where IBM’s top executives shared
their views and some customers of global stature shared their experiences with
regards to Green Computing and its growing demand.
The theme of the event was the Greening of Business: The Power of Big Green
IBM — Cool, Simple & Flexible. Over the past couple of years IBM has
delivered a portfolio of technologies to improve power utilization and reduce
energy costs by giving CIOs the tools to accurately plan, monitor, and control
power consumption to meet business expectations.
Commenting on this, Bernie Meyerson, Chief Technologist and VP Strategic Alliances,
STG IBM said, “IBM has a clear vision for Green Computing for the data
center and trends that are driving the need for efficient energy management.
We have delivered some advanced technology and innovations that improve energy
management inside the system including server and storage. Energy efficiency
is kept at the highest priority at the system design level.”
Apart from this, he emphasized the importance of chip design for attaining the
best outcome with regard to green computing.
Highlighting some roadblocks on the path to Green Computing, Meyerson added,
“Many data center layouts and operational procedures have not been designed
to support high-density technologies which increase the chances of failure due
to thermal events.”
While explaining the criticality of customer needs, Ross Mauri, GM Power Systems
Unit, STG IBM said, “It is extremely important to meet the needs of clients.
IBM POWER-based solutions for the data center and our leadership in the Unix
market have convinced most IT Managers.”
The event highlighted, IBM’s approach towards the optimization of IT infrastructure
as a holistic design. IBM is leading a “new paradigm in value creation”
for its clients. Mauri said, “The simultaneous optimization of materials,
devices, circuits, cores, chips, system architecture, system assets and system
software provides the most effective means for businesses to optimize the value
of their IT infrastructure.”
Virtualization in Demand
Highlighting the power of virtualization Meyerson said, “While taking power
efficiency to the next level, virtualization is still one of the core technologies.
Energy efficiency in the data center really is about doing more with less. Today,
many computer systems use 5 to 10% of their capacity. Driving improved server
utilization through our virtualization offerings will dramatically improve overall
data center power efficiency. IBM’s virtualization can help clients reach
100% server utilization.”
Sharing some analyst views on virtualization as a technology, Avneesh Saxena,
Vice President, Asia/Pacific Systems, Storage and Software Research at IDC talked
about virtualization in the data center. Saxena said, “Organizations need
to cope with increasingly complex IT infrastructure and systems when expanding
the scale and scope of their business. For years, enterprises have tried proprietary
approaches to decouple existing systems and, in turn, have been caught in a
vicious “stop-gap” cycle of sporadically reskilling, reimplementing,
upholding costly annual maintenance fees for enterprise applications, and relearning
users’ needs across organizations. This has led to a state where everything
works well in silos, but serious challenges crop-up when there is an attempt
to integrate applications and services. In today’s world where the dynamic
business environment demands a more agile IT, end-users face the constant challenge
of reducing complexities and improving IT efficiency.”
Saxena said, “Virtualization offers this promise, but
end-users tend to have an ambivalent attitude towards the technology. The dilemma
perhaps stems from lack of awareness as to its exact value.” He went on
to talk about how IDC sees the coming together of Virtualization solutions,
their expected impact on reducing complexity and end-user adoption trends in
the Asia Pacific region.
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IBM recently launched the POWER6, a chip it claims is the fastest microprocessor
ever built. It also announced the System p570, a server that leverages
the chip’s many breakthroughs in energy conservation and virtualization
technology. The new server is the first ever to hold all four major benchmark
speed records for business and technical performance. Executives of IBM
and Industry experts discussed the Power6 and the p570 at the event.
Satyanathan said, “At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles
the speed of the previous generation, the POWER5, while using almost the
same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means that customers
can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100%
or cut their power consumption virtually in half. The POWER6 is nearly
three times as fast as the latest HP Itanium processor that powers HP’s
server line.”
The POWER6 chip in the p570 is the first UNIX microprocessor that can
calculate decimal floating point arithmetic in the hardware. The built-in
decimal floating point capability gives it an advantage while running
complex tax, financial and ERP programs.
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Giving an Indian perspective on IBM’s Green Computing drive, Jyoti Satyanathan,
Country Manager, eServer pSeries, IBM India said, “Organizations worldwide
are consuming extreme amounts of energy through their use of information technology
–over 100 billion kilowatts per year globally—furthering today’s
energy crisis. The fact is that the data center energy crisis is inhibiting
our clients’ business growth now and in the future. Today’s Indian
IT Manager is not living in an isolated environment; he also wants to have a
affordable and environment-friendly set-up.”
According to an analysis done by Morgan Stanley, energy used to power and cool
today’s data centers represents 44% of a data center’s total cost
of ownership—and for a company of any size today, this can be a huge saving,
besides it being a great contribution towards protecting the environment.
Satyanathan added, “IBM currently runs the world’s largest commercial
technology infrastructure, with more than eight million square feet of data
centers in six continents. The savings are substantial—for an average 25,000
square foot data center, clients should be able to achieve 42% energy savings.
Based on the energy mix in the US, the savings equates to 7,439 tons of carbon
emissions reduction per year. IBM expects this will also help save more than
five billion kilowatt hours of energy per year, globally.”
Satyanathan added, “India is a potential market for us, green computing
will definitely going to be one such aspect that will drive the market in the
near future.”
faiz.askari@expressindia.com
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