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IBM Unveils Next-Generation "Intelligent Dashboard" for Improved Data Center Management


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IBM Systems Director Software Helps Streamline the Way Physical and Virtual Systems Are Managed in Multi-System Environments

ARMONK, NY

* IBM Systems Director can help reduce system administration and energy costs by nearly 30 percent(1) in a typical datacenter;
* Easy-to-use “intelligent dashboard” includes simple user interface, virtualization management and active energy management tools;
* IBM Systems Director integrates with IBM Tivoli software to provide a total service management solution -- with emphasis on virtualization, energy efficiency, automation and availability.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced an “intelligent dashboard” that will allow clients to view, maintain and adjust the energy consumption, performance, and hardware utilization of their multi-system, virtualized environment -- all in a single view.

The new IBM® Systems Director 6.1 software, part of IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center strategy to streamline complex infrastructures, is a suite of software tools to help clients manage energy, virtualization and overall computer operations. While industry spending on service administration and energy for running servers exceeds the spending on the server hardware themselves(2), IBM Systems Director helps clients reduce system administration and energy costs by nearly 30 percent in a typical data center, according to a recent International Technology Group study.

With the new IBM Systems Director as a foundation, IBM delivers an end-to-end systems management solution that helps clients deploy, monitor, analyze, optimize and update the server consolidation and virtualization environments that businesses are deploying today in an effort reduce the complexity and control the costs of their IT infrastructures. For CIO’s, server virtualization, server consolidation and cost cutting are the three top priorities today, according to recent studies(3). Specifically, IBM Systems Director allows clients to:

* Control costs and reduce complexity of systems management by integrating platform management provided by IBM Systems Director with IBM Tivoli® enterprise service management for a total IT service management strategy;
* Optimize the use of virtual resources to drive up server utilization and to reduce energy usage and cooling;
* Reduce downtime by monitoring the “health status” of physical and virtual resources on one server or across the datacenter.

“With IBM Systems Director, we’re providing clients a means to better understand the complexity and costs associated with managing their datacenter,” Rich Lechner, Vice President, Enterprise Systems. “As a result, clients can coordinate and manage the virtual and physical resources that make up their entire infrastructure. The combination of IBM Systems Director and Tivoli software consolidates an IT manager’s infrastructure in one view -- an ’intelligent dashboard’ -- allowing them to see and manage in real time the energy, space and people costs they need to allocate for and optimize.”

The next-generation IBM Systems Director software now has integrated cross-platform virtualization management as well as a redesigned user interface to improve productivity. Serving as a central point of the computing environment, IBM Systems Director works to oversee the operations of IBM System z®, IBM Power Systems, IBM BladeCenter® and IBM System x servers, as well as IBM System Storage platforms, along with select non-IBM hardware and storage systems.

Designed for ease-of-use, IBM Systems Director has a simple, intuitive browser-based interface, which provides a consistent look and feel with common and familiar management tasks. Additionally, it gives users a complete, single view of the data center’s physical and virtual devices and energy consumption through the IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager plug in -- including details from facility assets such as power distribution and cooling equipment.

Specific IBM server and storage offerings that the new IBM Systems Director applies to:

* IBM Power Systems: IBM Systems Director for Power Systems supports the entire server line from the high-end to blades and helps clients deploy, monitor, analyze, optimize and update Power server and storage physical and virtual resources running any combination of AIX, i or Linux™ workloads. A new edition of IBM’s UNIX operating system, AIX “Enterprise Edition” includes the IBM Systems Director agent and integrates the AIX Workload Partition (WPAR) Manager as well as Tivoli components that discover applications and server relationships, monitor system utilization and configuration changes and provide a visual representation of systems usage. More information can be found here: www.ibm.com/systems/power/software/management
* IBM System z: Available for customers running Linux on System z, IBM Systems Director exploits the mainframe’s inherent virtualization capabilities to scale resources to support millions of transactions per day or scale out to manage tens to hundreds of virtual servers. It supports z/VM® 5.4 and is designed to run hundreds to thousands of Linux servers on a single mainframe running with other System z operating systems, such as z/OS®, or as a large-scale Linux-only enterprise server solution. z/VM can also help to improve productivity by hosting non-Linux workloads such as z/OS, z/VSE, and z/TPF. More information can be found here: www.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/virtualization/
* IBM System x: IBM System x™ servers are based on X-Architecture®, IBM’s design blueprint for Intel processor-based servers, providing exceptional power-efficiency, performance and virtualization capabilities for today’s most demanding datacenters. IBM Systems Director is supported across the IBM System x portfolio, supplying clients a single, consistent interface to better manage IT. More information can be found here: www.ibm.com/systems/x/advantages/
* IBM BladeCenter: IBM BladeCenter combines servers, storage and networking in a single system. IBM Systems Director supports the entire IBM BladeCenter portfolio of five chassis and multiple servers designed to meet a wide range of specific client needs. More information can be found here: www.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/
* IBM System Storage: System Storage includes the IBM DS-series and N-series SAN and NAS storage. Systems Director for Storage supports integrated management of these storage products. Launch-level Integration and advanced storage management is provided with IBM TotalStorage® Productivity Center. More information can be found here: www.ibm.com/systems/storage/

IBM Global Technology Services is available to help clients analyze gaps and requirements for effective systems management and speeds up the implementation, configuration and deployment of IBM Systems Director 6.1. IBM Services is also able to assist existing IBM Systems Director clients in migrating to the new release, and offers maintenance and technical support services for the IBM Systems Director. The new IBM Systems Director software will be generally available in Q4’08.

About IBM
For more information about IBM Systems Director: http://www.ibm.com/systems/virtualization/about/campaigns/virtualization_management.html



1 Source: Value Proposition for IBM Systems Director: Challenges of Operational Management for Enterprise Server Installations, Management Brief September 2008 International Technology Group, Los Altos, California

2 Source: IDC, Virtualization 2.0: The Next Phase in Customer Adoption, Doc #204904, Dec 2006

3 Source: Goldman Sachs Group IT Spending Survey, July 2008.



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