Ireland has a small population, with fewer than 7 million people on the entire island. There is a large number of small organizations, and a very small number of large ones. However, when it comes to the IT challenges here, you’ll find they are exactly the same as those facing enterprises in every part of the world: how to reduce operational costs while using technology to drive growth in the business.

So to consider IBM PureSystems in the context of this common IT challenge, I like to think about what my colleague Dave Ridley in his blog of August 7th called the Three C’s: Consolidation, Choice and Cost reduction. I would actually add one more: Control.

Consolidation

Most of the clients I speak to are familiar with the concept of consolidation, and many implement it by virtualizing their x86 servers. This is perhaps a limited view as to what can be consolidated; at IBM, we tend to take a more holistic approach.

When we say virtualize everything, we mean just that. Flex System does this very well, with networking, storage and compute nodes of different types.  But we also take it a step further. We can help you consolidate more applications and more virtual desktops onto a smaller infrastructure too.

Choice

Choice is somewhat limited these days. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and x86 is most commonly offered, and indeed is sometimes the only thing on offer. As the famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow once said – if you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

As a first step, we like to consider the business outcomes to be driven by the technology. Second, we will look at the technology. So if you want FCoE and x86, that’s okay.

But if you want the solution tuned to the task rather than the task being tuned to the solution, we can help you decide between Power compute nodes, Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband or iSCSI.

Cost Reduction

With IBM you can achieve the highest levels of consolidation while being able to choose the platform that most suits you. And more choice does not mean more cost.

I accept that a technology based on fewer components should offer a better opportunity to achieve savings. But let’s look at x86 consolidation.

By supporting up to 50% more memory per host server, you can achieve far greater levels of consolidation, and save considerable amounts of money on software licensing.

You can achieve as much as 80% lower licensing costs for small, less-demanding IBM i environments with the entry four-core, two-socket node.

Control

Typically, 80% of IT costs are spent just supporting the existing IT infrastructure. So imagine a world where you can have a single point of control for your entire infrastructure, from compute to networking, storage and virtualization.

This is where our clients are seeing the benefits of the Flex System Manager (FSM). They can manage up to 16 chassis, 224 compute nodes and their networking and storage through this single management console.  The console allows rapid and direct access to the system rather than merely serving as a launch pad for multiple management tools.

So the three C’s — Consolidation, Choice and Cost reduction — plus my additional C of Control, roll into what we call an ‘Expert Integrated System.’

PureSystems offers the highest levels of consolidation, a choice that suits your business, and lower ownership costs. You can dramatically reduce your time-to-value for new infrastructures or applications, and enjoy a simplified user experience.

With the additional feature of configuration patterns which are already worked out to optimize every component of the infrastructure for the workload, you can see why so many people are choosing IBM PureSystems.

 

John Culleton is IBM PureSystems Sales Leader based in Ireland. This post was originally published at Expert Integrated Systems Blog.