IBM changes economics of UNIX computing in the Middle East

In conjunction with Gulf Business Machines (GBM), sole distributor for selected IBM products and services in the Gulf countries excluding Saudi Arabia, IBM hosted a roadshow in Oman, Qatar and Kuwait recently where worldwide and regional experts from IBM's Server Group briefed customers and business partners on the new eServer p5 systems that significantly increase system utilization, boost performance and lower costs.

The eServer p5 systems are the result of a large-scale, three-year research and development effort at IBM extending beyond traditional UNIX servers with mainframe-inspired features that are designed to help bring significant cost advantages to business organisations.

"The eServer p5 systems bring a remarkable breakthrough in server technology. We are changing the economics of UNIX computing with the most disruptive large-scale computing system since the debut of the IBM mainframe 40 years ago," said Wael Abdoush, systems group manager, IBM Middle East. "Today, a typical mainframe is 70-80% utilized, whereas a typical UNIX server is 70-80% under-utilized, which adds significant costs to an organisation's infrastructure-the new IBM p5 systems improve utilization by 40%, bringing enormous cost savings to this region's UNIX market."

The new IBM eServer p5 systems, based on the POWER 5 microprocessor, give clients choices of implementing different solutions - ranging from a 2-way server to a 16-way server - all leveraging the industry standard Power Architecture™ and designed to deliver the most potent performance and scalability ever available on the entry and midrange UNIX platform, according to widely used industry benchmarks.

"Powered by the world's most powerful 64-bit chip and IBM's Virtualization Engine, the eServer p5 is simply the most advanced UNIX computing system to date, providing our customers with unparalleled options to meet today's rigorous business environment," Soubhi Chebib, IBM brand director, GBM. "The roadshow was a great success and a good indicator on the exciting value proposition this presents to us and our customers."

Using as few as one fourth the number of processors, eServer p5 systems outperform HP servers in the significant Transaction Processing Performance Council's TPC-C™ benchmark test. The new eServer p5 systems shattered world records for select transaction processing, Web speed, Java™ performance and other business applications beyond expectations, in some cases beating HP's and Sun's performances by two and three times.

Additionally, the new IBM systems are designed to save customers significant IT costs.
In the new computing era, client demand will shift towards systems that offer breakthrough tools like the Micro-Partitioning technology in IBM's Virtualization Engine, which is designed to significantly improve utilization and reduce IT costs. The new eServer p5 systems are the first UNIX systems designed to enable clients to run multiple (up to ten) virtual servers or Micro-Partitions on a single microprocessor letting it do the work traditionally done by many. This allows businesses to better utilize processors and automatically balance processor partitions in less than one second to meet changing on demand business needs. IBM eServer p5 systems allow for exceptional server consolidation and mixed workloads on a single system by giving businesses the capability to run multiple different operating systems simultaneously.