IBM Unveils BladeCenter System For Telco Market

The BladeCenter, according to IBM, is designed to deliver high-speed connectivity for network bandwidth 10 times greater than previously possible with its other systems.

The offering is an extension of IBM's BladeCenter family, which was introduced earlier this year, said Bruce Anthony, an IBM distinguished engineer and chief technical officer for IBM's power telecommunications systems. This product offering pushes the family into the telecom market.

"They're really taking our thrust into the telecom market up to a whole new level," said Anthony. "The new networking capabilities let us take the performance of our system up by an order of magnitude so we can run much higher-performance apps and support higher performance, like IP-based television."

Anthony added that he sees the telecom market heating up as they go from silo-type, or proprietary, technology to off-the-shelf technology.

The IBM BladeCenter HT system is designed to meet Network Equipment Building System Level 3 standards, as well as European Telecommunications Standard Institute standards. It also is hardened to withstand high temperatures, violent shaking, lightning strikes, airborne contaminants, fires and electrostatic charges, according to IBM.

The company also is unveiling the IBM 4x1 AdvancedMC Carrier Blade, which supports four standard off-the-shelf full height AMC cards, enabling legacy WAN i/o transport, media gateway and signaling internetworking applications.

The IBM NGN Gateway Blade is designed to deliver external GbE network connectivity beyond anything that IBM blade servers have had available until now. The company noted in a release that the Gateway Blade is suited to Video on Demand, security applications and virtual private networks.

IBM also is announcing the Nortel 10Gb Ethernet Switch Module for BladeCenter, which is designed to increase the performance of multi-core networks by delivering higher levels of bandwidth and throughput for applications.

Anthony said the family of products all will be available in the first half of 2007, but would not be any more specific. He added that pricing information will be available in the first quarter of the new year.