IBM Design and Engineering Expertise Earns a Record Sixteen Awards at CeBIT

Innovative Prototypes and Industry-Proven Solutions by IBM Selected by the iF International Forum Design for Their Ability to Transform Industries.

HANOVER, GERMANY - 08 Mar 2006: Today at CeBIT, the leading European trade fair for information technology, IBM announced that the iF International Forum Design is awarding IBM sixteen Design Innovation Awards for superior products and solutions, giving IBM the most awards of any competing company. The iF product design awards will be formally presented to IBM at the CeBIT 2006 exhibition in Hanover, Germany on March 9.
The prestigious iF product design award is given annually to companies that achieve significant breakthroughs in design and collaborative innovation of products and solutions across a wide variety of industries. In addition to the IBM storage and server expertise that was recognized, a prototype headset that recognizes speech through both audio and video and a handheld trading device developed for the New York Stock Exchange that lets traders buy and sell millions of stocks wirelessly from the trading floor.

“Increasingly, innovation is the top business priority of our clients and the driving force that enables them to differentiate themselves from their competitors, said Lee Green, Worldwide Director, IBM Design Strategy and Brand Experience. ”By harnessing the intellectual property, design, engineering, and development expertise of IBM, we are able to help our clients integrate technology and business solutions to achieve innovation and bottom line business results. Today’s awards underscore the industry-defining work that’s been done with partners and clients in this area"

Four IBM products and innovations are recognized for their potential to transform industries:

-- The IBM Magic Block: a portable recording device that stores nonstop sound throughout the day, making these recordings the user’s private digital sound diary, easily searchable through voice recognition. An embedded fingerprint-recognition reader is used for security access to ensure privacy. The product was designed by IBM Design Consulting Services (DCS).

-- The IBM Audio Video Speech recognition system: a wireless headset that takes voice recognition technology to the next level, using both a microphone for audio and a camera to “read lips,” vastly improving speech-recognition accuracy in noisy environments. The product was designed, engineered and prototyped by IBM DCS and IBM Research.

-- The Creativity Console: a portable DJ mixer with four main device functions -- audio and video playback, music creation, video editing, and portable DJ capabilities. The product was designed and by IBM DCS.

-- The IBM Wireless Handheld Device: a custom-designed, wireless computer device used by stockbrokers to manage and monitor millions of stock trades from the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. The product was designed and engineered by IBM Engineering & Technology Services (E&TS) and DCS.


IBM was also recognized for its ability to provide clients with industry leading storage and server solutions. Each of these new products embodies innovative design aspects intended to reduce complexity for the end user. Among the products selected by the iF International Forum Design:

-- The IBM BladeCenter T: IBM’s BladeCenter system specially designed for telecommunications use with NEBS compliance, which provides exceptional resistance and fail-safe capabilities to clients.

-- The IBM xSeries 460: a server based on IBM’s X3 Architecture. The x460 can scale up to 32 processors to meet the growing demands of enterprises running compute-intensive virtualization, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and database applications.

-- The IBM xSeries 346: a dual-processor 2U server is one of IBM’s best-selling servers and is a staple in the datacenters of both enterprise and small and medium businesses for its workhorse power and additional storage capabilities.

-- The IBM xSeries 366: a four-way server based on IBM’s X3 Architecture, provides more computing power in a smaller form factor (3U) than many competitive models -- giving organizations powerful commercial application-hosting capabilities in a compact design.

-- The IBM xSeries 336: a standard dual-processor 1U server, powered by IBM’s eXtended Design Architecture offers superb performance for dynamic Web content serving, file and print, and distributed database management. The x336 is available with hot-swap fans and up to four hard drives, both industry firsts.

-- The IBM xSeries 306m: a multi-purpose rack server, delivers the most features and functionality for any 1U form factor including the industry’s first redundant hot-swap hard drives.

-- The IBM TotalStorage DS4800: a storage server for medium to large companies which incorporates industry leading 4 gigabit per second technology to deliver more than 42,000 input/outputs per second, allowing clients to store more in less space.

-- The IBM TotalStorage DS8000: a series of enterprise storage servers which utilizes IBM POWER processor technology and scales to over a petabyte.


Specific products that make up larger IBM storage and server products were also selected by the iF International Forum Design for their ease of use:

-- The IBM 7314-G30: a rack-mounted input/output drawer, which is designated as a Systems Storage product and attaches easily to System p products.

-- The IBM 7031-D24: a rack-mounted DASD drawer, is designated as a Systems Storage product and also attaches easily to System p products.

-- The IBM 7031-T24: a freestanding desk-side DASD tower, designated as a Systems Storage product which attaches to System p products.

-- The IBM 2.5 SFF HDD: a hard disk drive carrier used by System i,p,x and storage products.


Examples of some of the products highlighted today will be shown at IBM booth # 73 at CeBIT. Photos of all sixteen products can be downloaded at http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/19283.wss.

About IBM
IBM is the world’s largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that help enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business on demand. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.

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Charles Zinkowski

IBM Media Relations

IBM

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