IBM prepares for Power7 release

IBM is offering what it calls an easy upgrade path for Power6-based server users who will want to move to Power7 when it is available in the first half of 2010, reports eWeek.

Power7 will offer greater virtualisation capabilities, as well as two to three times the performance within the same power envelope, IBM says.

In addition, IBM announced System Director VMControl, which offers businesses an easier way to manage their virtualised environments.

Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems enhanced the performance and virtualisation capabilities of their chip multi-threaded (CMT) Sparc Enterprise server lines with the addition of 1.6GHz UltraSparc T2 and T2 Plus processors and release of Logical Domains virtualisation software, leveraging the latest release of the Solaris operating system, says DataCenterJournal.

"Adoption of our CMT servers spans from start-ups to the large enterprise and we continue to see huge interest from customers looking to maximise the return on their infrastructure investments," said Noriyuki Toyoki, corporate vice-president of Fujitsu.

"With the enhancements we're announcing today, we will be able to offer customers even greater performance and virtualistion capabilities."

Virtualisation specialist VMware has reported $33 million profits for the second quarter, a 36% fall on $52 million in the same period last year, states Computing.co.uk.

Revenue for the second quarter was $450 million, flat from the second quarter of 2008.

Services revenue, which includes software maintenance and professional services, were $228 million, an increase of 32%.