IBM Trumpets New Storage Tools, Services

February 11, 2009: IBM has unveiled what it is calling the “building blocks for 21st century infrastructure”, which takes the form of new products and services to help its clients build dynamic infrastructure that it claims will bring more intelligence, automation, integration, and efficiencies to the digital and physical worlds.

Big blue says that the new products and services will enable powerful computing systems to be used to manage and gain insight from physical infrastructure kitted out with intelligent sensors.

For example, a utility could build a smart grid to eliminate wasted power, delivering power to where it is needed most, in real time. This would also help in the monitoring of energy consumption in real time and identify stresses in electrical grids instantly and schedule pre-emptive maintenance.

IBM says that the key requirements for its new dynamic infrastructure are:

• The integration of digital and physical infrastructure, which will provide the ability to use information technology to manage business processes, increasingly intelligent physical infrastructure and assets, and drive new and improved services.
• The ability to manage, store, and analyse the 15 new petabytes of information the world is now generating per day. This will enable clients to address massive information management requirements associated with today's governance, compliance, availability, retention, risk, and security challenges.
• A reduction of massive inefficiencies and greater resilience in today’s interconnected world. Data centres costs, for example - for energy, space, etc. - have risen eight-times since 1996; and average distributed server utilisation is just 6-15 percent.

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