IBM's Leading "All-in-One" IT System Delivers POWER5+ Boost; Helps Promote Solutions Innovation by Simplifying Deployment of Java and SOA Applications

Dubai-UAE, February 22nd  2006 - IBM today announces the next generation of its leading "all-in-one" IT platform for small to medium businesses (SMBs) - the System i5 line - with major advances to help simplify IT operations. The new System i5 line helps small to medium businesses mask the complexity of IT operations, delivers excellent performance, and helps promote solutions innovation with broad application choices across four operating systems.

"The System i5 platform sets a new benchmark for IT simplification, flexibility, and reliability combined with elevated security that diminishes concerns associated with IT managers in small to mid-sized businesses," said Wael Abdoush, Manager of Systems and Technology Group, IBM Middle East, Egypt & Pakistan. "With our System i5 family being introduced, small and medium companies are able to manage their market demands or new transaction volumes better and allow their business to grow."

IBM is delivering the System i5 line with its leading POWER5+ processor, a dual-core "system on a chip" that runs at speeds up to 2.2 GHz, and shows up to a 33 percent increase in performance over the current POWER5-based iSeries models.

IBM is introducing a new version of its integrated operating system, i5/OS V5R4, plus extending greater flexibility to run Linux, AIX 5L and Microsoft Windows applications on the same system(1). i5/OS V5R4 delivers enhanced security and disaster recovery features that help companies promote continuous operations and make outages of any kind -- planned or unplanned -- transparent to their business.

Because small and mid-size businesses have fewer IT staff, the System i5 platform is designed as an "all-in-one" IT system. It comes pre-packaged with the hardware and software needed to run business applications the database, application servers, operating system, networking, security and management tools, plus storage.

Additional new features that help simplify IT operations for small and medium businesses include:

  • Extended Microsoft Windows Integration. IBM is previewing the future integration of IBM BladeCenter and xSeries to System i5 storage via an open, industry-standard iSCSI connection. This will give customers an easier and more flexible way to integrate and manage multiple Intel-based systems from the System i5 platform.

  • Enhanced security and compliance options.  With i5/OS V5R4, new auditing and intrusion detection capabilities help companies protect against network attacks such as scanning for open TCP/IP ports.

  • Virtual Tape support helps promote continuous operations.  With virtual tape support in V5R4, companies can now save directly to disk instead of a tape drive.  By enabling faster save operations, companies can help reduce the time their applications are unavailable during backup operations.

  • New easy-to-use database management tools. The DB2 UDB database is an integrated feature of i5/OS.  Now with new i5/OS V5R4 integrated database management tools, a database administrator can help more quickly identify and correct database performance problems and reduce time spent on day-to-day database maintenance

  • Simpler integration with IBM Storage Area Networks.  IBM offers both integrated storage and SAN-attached options for the System i5 platform. The IBM TotalStorage DS8000 and DS6000 offer technology that is scalable, flexible and easy to manage.  With the new i5/OS V5R4 boot from SAN capability, companies can help further simplify the deployment and operations of their storage, starting the operating system directly from the IBM SAN server.

Additional new features that help promote solutions innovation for small and medium businesses include:

  • New 32-bit Java Virtual Machine helps reduce the cost of deploying Java applications.  i5/OS has been a fully 64-bit operating system since 1995.  A new 32-bit JVM in i5/OS V5R4, however, enables small companies to reduce memory costs required to deploy Java applications.

  • New options to deploy SOA applications.  Many small to mid-sized businesses implementing a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) want to make their existing applications available as a web service, or alternatively access Web-services from their business processing applications.  Now i5/OS V5R4 incorporates open source Apache Axis application programming interfaces (APIs) to help enable simpler integration between i5/OS applications and SOA Web-services.

  • New Capacity on Demand features help support business growth.  Now available for the first time on the IBM System i5 520 2-way model, this feature enables companies to switch-on the second processor either temporarily, to handle peaks in business processing requirements, or permanently to support business growth.  Capacity on Demand is ideal for companies who need the flexibility to add new applications without incurring the costs of managing a second server.

  • IBM Accelerator for System i5 opens more options to deploy new applications. One of a number of Capacity-on-Demand features for the System i5, the Accelerator helps boost performance on systems designed for small businesses.  It enables small companies simply to add capacity to run Web-enabled and groupware solutions on the same system as their core business applications.  Running multiple applications on a single server helps small businesses optimize and integrate their IT operations, helping them avoid the costs of running multiple, under-utilized servers, each dedicated to a single application.

  • New Web Facing Deployment Tool to help extend applications to browser-based users.  With the new Web Facing Deployment Tool, IBM integrates the deployment of its two most popular Web-enablement tools -- IBM Web Facing and IBM Host Access Transformation Server -- with a single run-time providing seamless operations for browser-based users.

Product Availability
The enhanced POWER5 microprocessor technology for System i5 products is available on all models -- 520, 550, 570, and 595 -- and is planned to ship on February 14, 2006. Integration of BladeCenter and System i5 is planned to be available to customers in May 2006. Various financing options are available for any of the iSeries products to help provide clients a simple way to add capacity and leverage their IT investment. For more information visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/.

NB: In order to review IBM Middle East news, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/news/ae/

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About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate.  IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions ad technologies that enable telecommunications service providers and equipment suppliers to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider and is the fastest growing part of IBM, with nearly 150,000 professionals serving customers in 160 countries. For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com

© Press Release 2006