As competitors emerge from the woodwork, IBM has pulled out all the stops to reveal its Power7 set of products, expected in SA as early as next week.
Rodney Adkins, senior VP for IBM's systems and technology, and Ross Mauri, IBM's GM for the Power Systems Group, revealed the new products in London yesterday.
The products include the Power 750 Express, the entry-level system; the Power 775, designed to be a node in a cluster; the Power 770, which is the modular enterprise server; and the Power 780, the top end of the midrange models.
Adkins was quick to say the company's new Power7 systems are not a reaction to the sale of Sun Microsystems to Oracle. The newly-merged companies could start bringing full systems to the market, competing directly with IBM.
However, yesterday, IBM reminded customers that it has been developing full systems for a while, with the new Power7 systems showing a much higher level of integration and a new focus on energy efficiency.
The company has spent billions on the development of these systems, from the cores through to the application layer, which promises to almost halve the amount of memory used for SAP applications.
The company claims four times the power efficiency, with twice the performance at the same price in relation to its last set of Power6 systems.
The new systems have been designed to cater for a massive growth in the number of expected data transactions. IBM expects to see it boosted 10 times in the next year and will need real-time transactions and analytics on those transactions.
The company's new processor can come in a flavour of up to 4.14GHz and reads four threads per core. The processors also come with integrated or embedded DRAM, which is an innovation for the company.
The 750 and 755 will be available to South African customers by next week, while the 775 and 780 will be available in the country from March. IBM is offering migration services to organisations hoping to transfer to the new Power7 systems.
Despite the remnants of a recession still tugging at IT assets globally, Adkins is confident the time is right to bring the new technology to market. He says IBM is positive the new systems will bring enough of a value proposition to convince customers to switch.
The company will announce more products in the Power7 range over the year.
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