IBM Adds Utility Computing Features

IBM's p650, p670 and p690 now also allow memory to be purchased on a capacity-on-demand basis, said Jim McGaughan, director of IBM's eServer strategy. The company is also making increased processor or memory capacity available on a 30-day trial basis, he said.

For p670 and p690 servers, customers can purchase memory in 16-Gbyte chunks, McGaughan said. Unused memory can be "lit up" in 4-Gbyte blocks when needed, he said. The p650 can be purchased with no active memory, with customers having the option of turning on 4 Gbytes or 8 Gbytes when needed.

Under a new 30-day trial program, customers who pay an additional 10 percent of the cost of the processors installed in the system later can have as many turned on as needed to meet a spike in processing demand for a maximum of 30 days, McGaughan said. If they then purchase some of the processors, they become eligible for another 30-day trial later, he said.

For IBM's solution providers, the capacity-on-demand program is like a built-in annuity. "[It] takes away the pain business partners feel when determining what customers need," McGaughan said. "Customers often underestimate demand and then complain when performance is not what they needed."

On the storage side, IBM is starting to deliver some of the components related to its utility computing vision, said Jens Tiedemann, vice president of marketing for storage software at IBM.

IBM unveiled three new products aimed at virtualizing storage. The first, TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller, is an in-line storage virtualization appliance that enables scalable and secure management of data storage and migration, Tiedemann said. It is expected to be released soon and priced at less than $75,000.

The second, the TotalStorage SAN Integration Server, is a "SAN-in-a-can" bundle aimed at easing customer and solution provider transition to virtualized storage, Tiedemann said. The bundle includes a SAN volume controller, an IBM FAStT600 storage array introduced last month, and a Fibre Channel switch. That bundle is expected to be available shortly.

The third component, the TotalStorage SAN File System, allows all storage capacity from non-like array vendors to be pooled into a single file space, Tiedemann said. This technology, previously code-named Storage Tank, is expected to be available in December, he said.

MSI Systems Integrators, an Omaha, Neb.-based IBM solution provider, has been testing IBM's SAN Volume Controller with IBM's FAStT600 and Shark arrays under both AIX and Windows 2000 environments in customer shops, and has found them to work so far, said Joe Andersen, director of services and technologies at MSI.

However, the biggest drawback for utility computing to date is making customers understand the importance of moving the needed technology into the network, Andersen said. "Today %85 customers have all these nice technologies built into the box," he said. "Now we want to bring the technologies, the intelligence,which has only been in the box,and leverage it across everything. Then customers can begin to see the possibilities."

It's not too early to start talking to customers about virtualization and utility computing, Andersen said. "If you talk about products that are new but not ready yet, it is helpful in soliciting information from end users," he said. "You can see what they want to solve with on-demand computing."