STORAGE

TORONTO, CANADA -- IBM today announced new software, storage and servers for Grid Computing, as well as plans to Grid-enable its entire product portfolio. "Grid computing will take e-business to the next level by giving customers a resilient, flexible, virtual IT infrastructure readily available from any location, on demand," said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President, Technology and Strategy, IBM Server Group. "By Grid-enabling our products we give customers the ability to share computing resources, such as applications, data and computing power, both internally over intranets and externally over the Internet." Highlights of the announcement include: - IBM's WebSphere® e-infrastructure software will provide a robust reference implementation for the OGSA (Open Grid Services Architecture) grid services standards. IBM is working with Globus to re-tool the Globus tool kit to be Java (TM) 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) compliant using IBM WebSphere as the reference application server. This will allow IBM WebSphere customers to benefit through better use of grid-enabled network computing resources as they deploy their applications on Websphere, IBM's industry-leading infrastructure platform. Applications supporting the OGSA and deployed on WebSphere will enable customers to dynamically and intelligently use computing resources across the network in support of their e-business requirements. Grid computing enhances Web services by coordinating global applications and resources at various locations efficiently, regardless of the underlying implementations and services. Grid computing builds on the scope of Web services by providing a reliable, dynamic, and comprehensive infrastructure that brings together resources, applications and services within and across organizational boundaries. By supporting grid computing and Web services, businesses can solve complex problems by utilizing their resources more effectively and integrating business processes with partners and suppliers. - The IBM eServer line of servers already form the foundation for some of the world's most powerful supercomputers. By making the Globus Grid protocols available on IBM servers, IBM is enabling customers to plug these machines quickly and easily into Grid computing systems. To support Grid implementations, IBM intends to provide the Globus toolkit on each of its eServer platforms, having already made the Globus toolkit available on AIX® and Linux®. IBM also intends to provide an implementation of the Open Grid Services Architecture as part of its Grid solutions for customers. - Tivoli®, IBM's leading provider of e-business infrastructure management software will provide solutions that will enable Grid management functions such as: security; performance, availability configuration, operations, and storage management. In addition, IBM's Storage Group has announced several key offerings that will support Grid implementations such as: - IBM TotalStorage(TM) products including those based on open standards, such as network attached storage and the emerging iSCSI protocol. The iSCSI protocol is designed to transport data over IP networks via TCP/IP and has it's roots in IBM Research projects dating back to 1997. These IP-based products will provide accessibility to data anywhere within a Grid and be able to be provisioned dynamically when needed. The IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (ESS), code named "Shark," which is designed to handle large amounts of storage for on-line data and removable media products will be key to meeting the off-line data storage needs of a Grid. Other key IBM storage technologies will include virtualization to enable more efficient use of resources, sharing, availability, and dynamic allocation, and IBM's Storage Tank(TM), designed to be Grid-ready and providing the policy-based and autonomic capabilities that make Grid a reality. IBM Grid Expertise IBM is a leading supplier of Grid systems and services to the scientific and technical community including the United Kingdom National Grid, the Dutch Tera-Grid Facility, the University of Pennsylvania Mammography Grid, and the North Carolina Bioinformatics Grid. In addition to working with many of the world's leading research organizations in the development of Grid projects, IBM Research used Globus technologies to build its own "BlueGrid" -- a geographically distributed supercomputer linking IBM research and development labs in the United States, Israel, Switzerland, Japan and England -- to be used as a test bed for experimentation and prototyping of Grid services and solutions. IBM Global Services will offer an array of services to customers considering a Grid strategy. Among the services IBM plans to offer are consulting services to plan, design, migrate, implement, run and manage Grid environments, utilizing IBM's IT methodology to ensure success. This may include assistance with architecture, security, business and Information Technology processes, recovery, organizational structure, availability and optimization. For those customers with higher support services requirements, IBM offers a comprehensive suite of business-critical, High Availability Services from the server platform to the end-user with tailored workshops, assessments and packaged solutions. No other vendor can offer this extensive level of end-to-end support services in the new Grid environment. In the same way it played a leadership role in the commercial adoption of Linux, IBM is working with the Globus open source development community and the influential industry standards body, Global Grid Forum. Open protocols are essential to Grids because they enable heterogeneous systems to work together as a single system. For more information visit www.ibm.com