IBM Makes Its SMB Blades More Dynamic

IBM is upgrading its BladeCenter Express systems to bring more dynamic tools to small and medium businesses – including the ability to save energy and protect their data more strongly.

The upgrade gives middle-sized organisations the kind of dynamic infrastructures which large organisations are starting to take for granted, according to IBM. IBM is upgrading its BladeCenter Express to simultaneously support multiple operating systems, including AIX and Linux, and include a new data protection option.

The offerings touch on everything from IBM’s BladeCenter Express blade servers to data protection to online meetings through a new Lotus product.

“The products and solutions IBM has introduced in the last month will help our midsize clients make better business decisions, work smarter, become greener and leaner, and create an easy-to-manage information technology backbone,” Marc Dupaquier, general manager of IBM Global Midmarket, said in a statement.

IBM’s BladeCenter JS23 Express and JS43 Express are now powered by IBM’s latest Power6 chips, can run IBM’s AIX, IBM i, and Linux operating systems at the same time, and can scale higher than previous models.

Company officials said the upgraded hardware offerings offer midmarket companies a secure and resilient dynamic infrastructure solution that can fit in well with consolidation and virtualisation projects. They also can meet the demands for applications that need highly scalable hardware and high memory capacity, IBM said.

The IBM Comprehensive Data Protection Solution—which includes Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack, disk systems from the DS3000, DS4000 and DS5000 Express series, and the System x 3550 server—can help midmarket businesses eliminate the need to shut down key applications during such tasks as nightly backups. It also offers immediate recovery following any data loss, the IBM officials said.

IBM also offers remote monitoring, reporting and management features through its Remote Managed Services, which now includes support for unified communications devices and Linux server management. New Proventia Web application security capabilities added to IBM’s Internet Security Systems helps protect applications from malware and attacks.

Finally, LotusLive Meetings, an offering within IBM’s LotusLive social networking and collaboration cloud service, helps businesses reduce travel costs by enabling better online collaboration, the company said.