IBM Plans Intelligent Systems With ‘Integrated Expertise’

IBM announced plans to introduce a family of computing systems that feature “integrated expertise” inside the machine.

At the IBM Smarter Computing Executive Forum in New York, Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group (STG), said IBM will introduce a new era of computing – a new category of expert integrated systems that are designed to run the workloads enterprise users most frequently deploy.

Project-planning expertise

IBM has dug into its bag of tricks to come up with these systems that bring built-in expertise to help users get new projects up and running in as little as four hours. This cuts months off the time it takes to deploy new applications, IBM said in an invitation handed out to attendees. The invitation was to an event where IBM will introduce these new systems on 11 April in New York.

The proverbial bag of tricks IBM reached into to help build these new “integrated expertise” systems is the company’s R&D unit, IBM Research. Adkins said IBM spends about $6.2 billion (£3.9bn) annually on R&D. Of that, $3 billion (£1.9bn) is spent in the STG unit. Yet, Adkins also noted that up to one-half or more of the patents awarded to IBM every year come from the STG division.

“This is an exciting opportunity for us, given all the things we’re doing around Smarter Computing,” Adkins said. “These systems are based on the deep research and investments we made around systems design. It involves deep optimisation and integration of systems technology.”

Moreover, the new systems will serve as a proof point of IBM’s Smarter Computing strategy, Adkins said.

Asked if the introduction of these new systems would be as big an announcement for IBM as the introduction of the zEnterprise System in July 2010, Adkins said the announcement would be “as big, but different”.

Adkins said IBM would continue to shed more light on the upcoming systems as the introduction event approaches. What he did not say was how much, if at all, the systems would rely on technology from IBM’s Watson computing system.