IBM introduces servers to meet demands of new economy

IBM South Africa today announced a new generation of servers featuring mainframe-class reliability and scalability, broad support of open standards for the development of new applications, and capacity on demand for managing the unprecedented demands of e-business.

"The new eServers signal a strategic repositioning of the IBM server range aimed at addressing the demands of the new economy," says Iqbal Hassim, Systems Sales executive at IBM South Africa. "IBM is now well geared to fully support customers as they transform into e-businesses."

"The trend in the South African business community is clearly for servers capable of meeting front-end applications and capacity on demand pressures. The eServer evolves from IBM`s combined approach to also provide end-to-end availability, flexible financing options, customer care advantage, and pre-tested solutions," says Hassim.

The new product range dovetails with the local IBM Systems Sales division strategy of combining the strengths of hardware and software services, above-average financing options, and business partnerships to provide appropriate IT infrastructure for the new economy.

The IBM eServer is a product of the company`s global three-year Project Mach 1 which has included the consolidation of IBM server manufacturing and development teams, the realignment of its sales force from selling by platform to customer segments, and technology breakthroughs such as copper chips, Silicon-on-Insulator and Memory eXtension Technology.

Driven by open standards, the Internet is rapidly transforming business models, markets and industries. By 2003, IBM estimates there will be 2.6 billion network access devices, including cell phones and PDAs. The rapid adoption of pervasive 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.

To handle the demands of the new e-business infrastructure, every IBM eServer will come with a variety of offerings that provide the flexibility and speed-to-market enterprises large and small need to help them build, run and manage an e-business infrastructure affordably and effectively. The new servers feature technology from IBM`s high-end servers applied across the entire product line which includes the eServer zSeries (previously branded Netfinity: mission-critical data and transactions), eServer pSeries (previously AS/400: powerful, technologically advanced UNIX server), eServer iSeries: (previously RS/6000: integrated business server for mid-market companies), and eServer xSeries (previously S/390: affordable, Linux-ready, Intel-based server with mainframe-inspired reliability technologies). Open standards used throughout the range means all eServers run native Linux.

All the new products are available in South Africa immediately. IBM`s previous product set will continue to be fully supported, with upgrade paths to the new server range available.