IBM Reduces Cost of High-Availability Technology With New, Flexible Offering

Business Continuity Grows Increasingly Important as Economy Dictates Need for Total Reliability at All Levels

ARMONK, NY - 09 Aug 2006: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it’s driving down the cost of high-availability technology with a new, flexible offering that makes 24/7 reliability available to a broader set of clients. Based on IBM’s “all-in-one” System i business computing platform, the new offering is designed to better meet the growing need for businesses to protect against system downtime and to improve regulatory compliance.

Owing to its unique architecture, the System i platform offers superior security, virus-resistance, reliability and availability to help customers continue operations in nearly any circumstance. Unibill, a telecommunications billing company with corporate offices in Lake Charles, Louisiana, selected System i for its ability to help the company maintain system availability and data reliability at all times -- Unibill’s primary business goal.

“We tested our disaster recovery plan in action during Hurricane Rita, switching to our back-up System i housed in Dallas after severe flooding left our communication lines unusable. Communications for all of our customers were rerouted to the back-up system, enabling us to continue business as usual with minimal impact to our customers,” said Mike Clark, systems manager for Unibill. “This makes me confident that we have the right technology in place and are prepared for what is, by all predictions, to be a busy hurricane season.”

Today, IBM is building on System i’s inherent security and reliability and extending it with the delivery of new System i Capacity BackUp (CBU) Editions with flexible options that can help midsize and enterprise customers lower the cost of implementing a second system for business continuity by some 30 to 50 percent, depending on the client’s configuration. For example, the CBU Editions come with a set of standby processors that can be used at no-charge in the event of a disaster or individually activated to affordably support additional applications or roll swap operations as needed.

Customers can also realize further savings by temporarily transferring their licenses for i5/OS, System i’s flagship operating system, from their primary system to the CBU Edition to avoid incurring extra fees when either scheduled or unplanned outages occur. This versatility allows customers to install a system that meets their current service level requirements, while enabling them to grow easily into higher levels of availability as their business needs change.

Both enterprise and smaller business customers are increasingly recognizing the need to eliminate system downtime as globalization demands more companies become constantly available and various regulations require that most US-based businesses have a contingency plan in place. The ability to meet specific levels of service in the event of a disaster or business interruption is also required in many partner or supplier relationships and can even allow companies to lower their insurance premiums.

The new CBU Editions let customers run applications in the event of both planned and unplanned downtime and enable a broad range of business continuity scenarios, including:

* Backup to tape -- the most basic requirement that all IT organizations
should execute;
* Disaster Recovery -- the ability to temporarily move operations to a remote location when unplanned downtime occurs, but not to run applications;
* and High Availability -- the set-up of a secondary system that can assume tasks as seamlessly as possible when scheduled or unscheduled downtime occurs and keep business applications online at all times.

System i supports among the broadest set of business applications in the industry, so companies requiring an extremely reliable, available system can easily move their current applications to the platform regardless of their current system. IBM Independent Software Provider (ISV) partners specializing in high-availability and disaster recovery solutions have already begun to support the new CBU Editions with companion offers like training and special software pricing, including DataMirror, iTera, Lakeview Technology, Maximum Availability, Trader’s and Vision Solutions. For more information, see ibm.com/systems/i/hardware/cbu.

The new System i 550 CBU Editions, designed for mid-sized customers, are planned for availability later this month. New System i 570 and System i 595 CBU Editions for medium to large enterprises, are available now.

System i customers can learn more about high availability technology and receive training on the new CBU Editions at the COMMON Fall 2006 IT Education Conference and Expo from September 17-21, 2006 in Miami Beach, Florida where disaster recovery will be the conference’s special educational focus. COMMON, the System i users group, provides more than 22,000 IT professionals involved with the System i opportunities to share information, receive education and network with their peers. For more information, see http://www.common.org/conferences/2006/fall/.

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Joanna Brewer

IBM Media Relations

IBM

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