IBM Bundles Blades, Storage, Software With Auto Provisioning

The new IBM Web Infrastructure Orchestration bundle consists of seven IBM server blades, a FAStT storage array, and licenses for DB2, WebSphere and Tivoli, all integrated together and managed by IBM Tivoli Intelligent ThinkDynamic Orchestration, said Sandy Carter, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Tivoli.

Orchestration came to Tivoli as part of IBM's acquisition in May of Think Dynamics. It is the follow-on to IBM's recently-introduced Project Symphony, the code-name for a range of products, bundles, offerings, and lifecycle services to help automate customer IT infrastructures, said Carter.

The bundle aims at soothing three pains faced by corporate IT departments, said Carter. The first is low utilization of IT resources. Analyst firm Gartner said that up to 75 percent of installed IT resources are not utilized worldwide, she said. The second pain is the need to cut IT costs, while the third is a need to link IT and business needs.

Orchestration addresses these pains with what Carter called "packaged intelligence." Intelligence in the software allows applications such as WebSphere to be automatically configured on a blade server. As server requirements grow, or as they reach a temporary spike in demand, more server blades can be pulled from a pool of blades and automatically configured with those applications in a matter of minutes rather than hours, Carter said.

Orchestration also allows corporations to set policies which specify when a new server blade is to be pulled from the pool or sent back, said Carter.

The bundle will be available via direct and indirect sales channels. IBM is targeting it as blade partners, storage partners, and WebSphere partners, Carter said.

For such solution providers, Carter said the challenge will be to ensure they have the expertise to work across three skill areas. "Blade server partners will need to make sure they have software skills, software partners will need to ensure they have hardware skills, and they all will require expertise in deploying such solutions.

Hunt Russell, sales manager at Evolving Solutions, a Hamel, Minn.-based IBM solution provider, said the bundle looks like a good solution made of reliable components and packaged with what seems to be a good price.

While Evolving has already sold about 10 IBM Blade Center solutions in the past three months, the main application has been for use with Citrix for customers who want to replace multiple, independent Citrix "pizza box" servers with a blade infrastructure.

"That [Citrix focus] is Ground Zero for blade servers," said Russell. "Stage two is probably the kind of applications that IBM is talking about with the Orchestration bundle. Web servers and so on."

However, Russell said, WebSphere installations today are still pretty much focused on stand-alone servers. "Part of the reason is that customers are not yet ready for a change," he said. "But when they are ready, this may be the right solution."

The bundles are scheduled to ship at the end of this month with a price of about $300,000. Solution providers should expect to charge between $50,000 and $100,000 for deployment of the bundle, said Carter.