IBM Launches "Big Green Linux" Initiative

LinuxWorld - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a Big Green Linux initiative to help its clients further integrate Linux into the enterprise as a way to reduce costs and energy consumption by building cooler data centers.

The Big Green Linux initiative supports Project Big Green, a broad commitment that IBM announced in May to sharply reduce data center energy consumption for IBM and its clients.
The announcement was made at a press conference this morning at the opening of the LinuxWorld and Next Generation Data Center tradeshows in San Francisco. Supporting IBM in the event, which included announcements of new products, customers and services, were representatives from the Linux Foundation and Novell.

“With every release of our SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, Novell finds new ways to help customers reduce power consumption through improvements in policy-driven power management and system monitors for servers, along with better suspend functionality for laptops,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. “We look forward to collaborating with IBM on ways we can improve integration between hardware and software to save customers both energy and money.”

“Businesses, governments and clients around the world are all actively searching for ways to build cooler and more energy-efficient data centers as a way to reduce costs and address environmental concerns,” says Inna Kuznetsova, IBM’s global executive for Linux. “Customers are increasingly turning to the Linux-consolidation capabilities of IBM’s System z and System p platforms, which is one reason IBM estimates that approximately 30% of IBM’s Linux-related server revenue now comes from non-x86 platforms.”

IBM Paves The Way
IBM signaled its Big Green Linux initiative last week when the company announced that it plans to consolidate approximately 3,900 of its own computer servers on to about 30 System z mainframes running the Linux operating system. IBM anticipates that the new server environment will consume approximately 80 percent less energy than the current set up, resulting in significant savings over five years in energy, software and system support costs.

With more than 8,000,000 square feet of data-center space for its employees and commercial workloads for clients, IBM operates the world’s largest and most sophisticated data-center operations, with major locations located worldwide. The company anticipates that the new global infrastructure, supporting over 350,000 users, will serve as a powerful example of IBM’s ongoing transformation toward cutting-edge data center design for large enterprises around the world. Since 1997, IBM has consolidated its strategic worldwide data centers from 155 to seven.

Information Server Blade
IBM continues to deliver new Linux-driven products to the market that will help clients reduce energy consumption. One such product is the Information Server Blade running Linux, the industry’s first data virtualization offering designed to usher in a new era in information management. The new system simplifies large data integration projects providing an enterprise-wide view of information, resulting in better business insight and real-time access to trusted information.

IBM Information Server Blade running Linux delivers a pre-tested and optimized solution including hardware, software and services to help simplify large data integration projects and making IBM’s information integration platform quicker to deploy. With unlimited capability to scale to handle large volumes of data, the Information Server Blade furthers IBM’s global Information on Demand initiative, which is enabling clients to gain a competitive business advantage through new and innovative uses of information. The modular, scalable, high-performance Information Server Blade consolidates and moves massive amounts of data to increase business insight and manage growing information overload problems.

Volkswagen AG and Telefonica Moviles EspañaMove to IBM System p

IBM also announced that Volkswagen AG and Telefonica Moviles España are the two latest clients who are consolidating their Linux workloads on IBM’s POWER processor-based System p platform as they seek to maximize their IT investments and become more energy efficient. This movement underlines a broader industry trend, signaled by the fact that nearly 700 companies have migrated from competitive UNIX platforms to IBM System p running Linux or AIX since the beginning of 2006.

The number of Linux on POWER applications continues to expand, and currently there are nearly 3,000 applications running natively on Linux on POWER-based System p servers. System p Application Virtual Environment (System p AVE) will allow most x86 Linux binaries to run unmodified as well. This offering helps to expand the x86 workloads that can be moved to a System p server, increasing the savings customers can achieve by consolidating x86 server footprints onto System p platforms.

Linux: The Next Generation
IBM’s Linux Technology Center has also been involved in contributing a number of recent features to the Linux kernel for scaling CPU clock speed and voltage and keeping idle CPUs in a ’tickless,’ low-power state longer; all of which make Linux more power efficient in datacenters.

“At the Linux Foundation, we’ve realized that while there have been many recent advances in Linux power management, there are still new, untapped ways to make Linux more green,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “Our Green Linux initiative will leverage the power of our members, including IBM, to enhance these improvements. We expect Linux to be a leader in this area, and for Linux customers, and the environment, to realize the gains brought about by our members’ efforts. We applaud IBM for continuing to focus their efforts in this important area.”

Open Source and Linux Software and Services
Continuing its active participation in the rapidly growing open source ecosystem, IBM today announced further products and partnerships designed to help both enterprise and SMB customers integrate open source effectively into their IT infrastructure. These solutions also address key challenges for customers wanting to use open source, including support, integration, and interoperability between open source and private source software.

IBM and Novell announced an agreement to join forces to capture a larger piece of the growing open source application server market. Under the agreement, Novell will deliver and support WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, making it the industry’s most comprehensive open source-based server offering.

The agreement comes on the heels of the one millionth distribution of WAS, IBM’s open source-based application server, which is based on Apache Geronimo and free to download and use.

IBM and Novell also announced the availability of an open collaboration client solution delivered through business partners, which provides businesses a fast and easy way to install integrated email, instant messaging and office productivity tools on a Linux desktop. Built on the Eclipse open framework and powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell, the open collaboration client consists of industry leading software products including IBM Lotus Notes with IBM office productivity editors and IBM Lotus Sametime.

IBM is also continuing the expansion of its portfolio of Linux Server service products with the announcement of IBM Implementation Services for Linux -- High Availability Clusters (http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offerfamily/gts/a1027709). This cost effective and energy efficient service is designed to provide highly available services throughout the enterprise by consolidating distributed servers onto Linux high availability clusters.