Announce Day – IBM i Highlights

Here it is – another Announce Day. Sometimes these things come and go without much specific for IBM i customers. Not this year. With the August 17 announcement, IBM i customers have had three very big announcements in 2010. First was the announcement of the first of the new POWER7 systems in February, then the availability of IBM i 7.1. Today, we add the announcement of the rest of the POWER7 family, along with some new items which I’m sure will fit right in with the plans some of you have. The announce website has all the details, but here are some highlights for IBM i.

The entry and low-end Power Systems are here. As we’re all probably well familiar with by now, this is the core of the IBM i business. The IBM i value proposition as an integrated platform for business solutions, with a low total cost of ownership, has meant we are the leading IBM platform in small and medium organizations. The POWER5 and POWER6 520 models have been very important to that customer set, and the 710, 720, 730 and 740 will be the entry and low-end offerings that fit their needs for price and capability, while giving them significant room to grow. Each of these POWER7 systems comes with multiple processor cores, though you only have to license what you need for your environment.

In partnership with industry-leading ISVs, we announced new IBM i Solution Editions based on Power 720 and 740. These new Solution Editions provide a complete, integrated offering for midsize businesses that can reduce the cost, complexity and risk of deploying new business solutions. These solutions have been optimized for IBM i and the new POWER7 servers, both in terms of performance and installation, in order to deliver a rapid return on investment. Stay tuned for more information on these exciting partnerships and offerings for the IBM i marketplace. In fact, two weeks from now, I plan to cover all of the offerings in this blog, but if you just can’t wait, here’s a link. 

And, if you’re one of our largest customers, the high-end system, the POWER7 795, is also being announced today. So, those people who attended COMMON in Orlando now get their small systems and their large systems. As is the case with the rest of the POWER7 product line, you will need IBM i 6.1.1, or IBM i 7.1 to use these systems.

Other items of note in this announcement include a Solid State Drive (SSD) offering, and support for the cryptographic co-processor. I talked last year about how the IBM i architecture is uniquely positioned to take advantage of SSDs, and now more of our customers will be able to fit these devices into their budgets. If your business looked at SSDs in the past and found them too expensive, take a look at this new PCIe SSD offering. The PCIe Crypto Coprocessor is typically for customers who have banking, credit card or finance applications, especially those who require hardware that is certified to provide FIPS 140-2 level 4 security.

One of the items that won’t make the announce is a description of how we’re delivering much of this capability. It relates to something called a Technology Refresh, and next week’s blog will cover that in detail. So stay tuned!