eServer, a computing model devoted to handling e-business, was launched
today by IBM.
The product features mainframe-class reliability and scalability, support
of open standards for the development of new applications, and capacity on
demand for managing the demands of e-business, according to Bill Zeitler,
senior vice president and group executive, IBM Server Group.
“For those involved in helping customers transform themselves into
e-businesses, it’s now clear that we’re entering a new phase,” he said.
“This new world is going to place unprecedented demands on the underlying
infrastructure that supports e-business. It will evolve over years and
stretch the IT resources of most companies.”
IBM estimates that by 2003, there will be 2.6 billion network access
devices, including cell phones and PDAs. “The rapid adoption of e-business
will cause a 1,000-fold increase in the amount of data flowing over the
Internet, a tidal wave of data-intensive, highly-integrated transactions,
and unpredictable spikes in network traffic that threaten to overwhelm the
current IT infrastructure,” according to Zeitler. “That’s why we’re
introducing the eServer.”
Each eServer fully embraces open industry standards such as Java, XML,
HTTP, HTML and Linux. The product was created by Project Mach 1, a major
cross-company initiative. The goal was to create an infrastructure in which
computing power migrated from traditional, centralized IT systems into
distributed high-speed networks so that usage of servers, applications and
other IT resources became pervasive.
This new e-business infrastructure consists of high-speed networks,
seamlessly integrated applications and powerful servers engineered for
specific types of workloads.
The eServer is designed to provide the flexibility and speed that large and
small companies need to build, run and manage their e-business
infrastructures affordably and effectively.
Features of the product include:
- Two types of capacity upgrade on demand(CUoD): Vertical CUoD allows
customers to boost server horsepower by activating extra processors built
into the eServer. Horizontal CUoD provides additional, pre-installed servers
at a customer site to enable instant upgrades when needed. - Logical partitioning (LPAR) — Originally developed for IBM mainframes,
LPAR capability is available immediately on the new zSeries and iSeries and
on pSeries and xSeries in the future. - Availability Advantage — These services help customers assure high
availability for their entire IT environment — including servers,
applications and their network — through periods of explosive growth,
unexpected business success or changing business needs. - High-availability clustering — developed for IBM mainframes — will be
available across the IBM family. - Reliability and fault tolerance features
- A comprehensive toolkit that allows customers and software developers
to create scalable e-business applications once and deploy them across the
entire IBM family.
The product will begin shipping this quarter.