APPLICATIONS

iDataPlex Systems Help Merrill Reach for Cloud: IBM announced today that Merrill Lynch will use its new iDataPlex servers, a new class of data center hardware that allows mass-scale, Internet-style computing in a compact, energy-saving package. The industry-standard, IBM System x iDataPlex servers will be used to help Merrill Lynch build and evaluate new risk-analysis programs. Merrill's iDataPlex units draw minimum power -- 40% less than typical designs. iDataPlex more than doubles the amount of systems that can run in a single IBM rack -- packing five times the compute power of typical rack systems. Taking a page from the Internet's model, iDataPlex is built for stateless computing that effectively turns many separate computers into a pool of shared resources or "cloud." Merrill Lynch is among a handful of companies leading their industries towards using cloud networks to deliver applications only when needed. "Our goal is to rapidly adopt technologies like iDataPlex that reduce the power consumption within our data centers," said Jeffrey M. Birnbaum, chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch. "iDataPlex is a perfectly positioned platform for this new style of computing -- giving us the ability to pack a lot more compute power into smaller, less expensive package and minimize power and cooling costs. iDataPlex technology combined with a Stateless computing model allows Merrill Lynch to optimize Data Center efficiency." iDataPlex marks a key engineering advance in IT hardware. It helps IBM clients develop cloud-style data centers, designed to take advantage of dramatic improvements in IT efficiency and provide for quick rollout of new IT services to support future business growth. IBM is helping clients move to new enterprise data centers by focusing on best practices around virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing. iDataPlex is part of IBM's "Blue Cloud" initiative, powered by 200 full-time researchers and more than $100 million in investments over the past three years. Blue Cloud brings together a variety of offerings to help IBM clients deliver an ever-expanding number of IT services demanded by business users and consumers. Built on IBM's expertise in delivering large-scale computing systems, Blue Cloud is a set of hardware, software and services that allows IBM clients to offer personal and business services from remote, centralized servers, the "cloud," that share computing resources and bandwidth -- to any device, anywhere.