Rows and floes of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air ”“ clouds. But the term is increasingly associated with high level computing operations. IBM is among the leaders in changing clouds from nebulous to profitable.
Big Blue accented that perception last week by announcing a well-grounded initiative called “Blue Insight” to bring “cloud computing” to greater mainstream use, expanding a companywide system to commercial customers.Â
The initiative is good news for its Poughkeepsie-based employees, who make the mainframes used to keep the clouds in order.
On Nov. 16, IBM formally announced implementation of Blue Insight, an IBM internal cloud system the company terms the world’s largest private cloud computing environment for business analytics. It will provide IBM sales teams and developers with “new levels of insight to better meet the needs of clients worldwide,” according to the company. The cloud will launch initially with more than a petabyte of data, the equivalent of more than 300 billion ATM transactions.
At the same time, IBM also announced an exterior version of Blue Insight, for use by client companies dealing with huge volumes of data. The IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, is available for clients to build their own private cloud environments based on the same infrastructure that IBM is using internally.
The systems will be maintained by “IBM z mainframe” computers that are able to process prodigious amounts of data. Blue Insight will run on a System z10 mainframe computer with 48 processors (32 processors for production, 18 processors for development and test environments) and strong cryptography ”“ capable of handling up to 10,000 secure transactions per second, with redundant backup support.
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“Cloud” is the term for describing computer resources and data storage that is accessed via the Internet, instead of being stored on site. The advantage is simple, according to IBM”™s own description, cloud computing “addresses the explosive growth of Internet-connected devices and complements the increasing presence of technology in today’s world. Cloud computing is massively scalable, provides a superior user experience, and is characterized by new, internet-driven economics.”
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The IBM system does more than simply store data and information, it provides the capability to analyze huge streams of information and provide findings to employees anywhere on the globe, for use in whatever applications are pertinent. IBM is using the analytics of its Blue Insight to better serve customers
“This new cloud and the insights that our analytics will provide are the next step in the continuous transformation of our business to better serve our clients,” said Pat Toole, chief information officer (CIO) of IBM. “I expect this first-of-its-kind approach will help drive both new growth opportunities as well as have a significant impact in cost savings, which is exactly the kind of client-focused value that businesses are asking of their IT organizations.”
Big Blue believes it is meeting a growing need in making this service available to customers. In a recent IBM Global Chief Information Officer Study of more than 2,500 CIOs around the world, 83 percent of respondents identified business intelligence and analytics, the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights, as the top way they will enhance their organizations’ competitiveness and ability to meet client needs.
The use of mainframe computers as the platform for the service once again confounds the predictions that mainframes would go the way of dinosaurs.
Instead, a single mainframe platform can handle the needs of redundant servers throughout a company operations and far more cheaply than other options
“What IBM has done is come up with a perfect application for a private cloud,” according John Webster, senior partner at the Evaluator Group, commenting on IBMs cloud initiatives on the CNet website. He notes that use of mainframe operating systems is rising because the technology is proven, the bugs long since worked out and the security capability of mainframes is established well beyond any other current cloud alternative.
