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  5. IBM's Continuing Information Infrastructure Journey: Page 3 of 4
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IBM's Continuing Information Infrastructure Journey: Page 3 of 4

IBM held its Information Infrastructure Analyst Summit in Boston last week, building on the initiative it launched a little over a year ago. While the original launch articulated IBM's direction, it was also very product oriented. This time, the Summit was primarily focused on strategy. Thus, product announcements can be separate and distinct, and can serve as instances of how IBM is actually executing according to its announced direction. But a direction -- in the sense of the vision of where a
DAVID HILL
November 02, 2009

GPFS is by no means the only current (or likely future) technology IBM has to address these issues but it is the cornerstone for the company's efforts in optimizing the information infrastructure.

Selected Highlights

The Information Infrastructure Summit covered a wide range of IBM strategies and solutions, including three areas we found particularly intriguing:

   1. Cloud Computing -- From IBM's perspective, cloud computing is a consumption model optimized by workload. The company believes in the "have it your way" delivery of cloud computing products and services as private, public, or hybrid. Strategically, IBM believes it will distinguish itself from competitors through higher performance and stronger service level agreements (SLAs) although its reputation and many years of experience in outsourcing cannot hurt either. The focus here is on file-based services based on GPFS.
   2. Virtualization -- Consolidation is a good first step for businesses to consider but IBM has a much broader view.  Emerging management software will leverage virtualization to provide pools of servers that are as easy to manage as single systems, overcoming the crisis in management of today's distributed server sprawl. In addition, new tools will enable the use of virtual resource objects, facilitating software development, versioning, provisioning, and management - including software distribution as virtual appliances. Adding these valuable technologies to an IT infrastructure also adds complexity, and to overcome this IBM will provide integrated IT building blocks that combine hardware with virtualization technologies and management software in a range of standardized offerings.  As these advances and other innovations become deployed, comprehensive service management and service-oriented architecture will be critical to reducing IT cost and improving IT effectiveness.
   3. Archiving -- While the DR550 continues to be available, IBM has  unveiled its eventual successor called the IBM Information Archive, an appliance  that has a NAS look (in addition to retaining its prior look for existing customers). Once again the fingerprints of GPFS are apparent. The new solution's speeds and feeds are important, but the overarching use of a data integration metadata repository is more so. That should enable the better use of sophisticated data analytics technologies, such as for eDiscovery.

In a Nutshell

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