IBM’s New Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

I wrote in a post just the other day about the opportunity for companies looking to build their enterprise mobile strategies, mentioning some 75 percent of respondents in our CIO study asserted that mobility is a top priority for their business strategy.

But I also mentioned the challenges, like the continued emergence of new platforms and OSes and devices, concerns about security and privacy of sensitive corporate information, and other related concerns.

Today, IBM made another announcement that will help more companies embrace the opportunity mobility presents, but also enjoy the fruits of IBM’s massive investments in virtualization technology as well.

This new set of flexible workplace solutions are intended to enable clients to create a simple, cost-effective environment that allows employees to use any device to access workplace applications anytime and anyplace.

IBM SmartCloud Desktop Infrastructure solutions are designed to help clients get ahead of the rising trend toward employees bringing their own electronic devices to work.  It allows organizations to manage desktops centrally while small or large numbers of users can access desk top applications from any location or device, including personal computers, tablets, smart phones, laptops and thin clients.

The solutions were created to help clients escape the constraints of physical computing — simplifying desktop management, tightening security, and enhancing overall employee productivity.

The IBM offerings support the widest range of industry hardware, software and virtualization platforms across various industries, including health care, education, financial services and retail, as well as the public sector, local, state and federal government agencies.

For example, the 2,000-student Gilmer County, Texas Independent School District is using the offering to provide a more flexible workplace for teachers and administrators.

School District Technology Director Rusty Ivey had this to say about this new virtualization solution: “The IBM virtual desktop solution with Virtual Bridges VERDE on System x allows us to lower desktop management costs, while improving data security and disaster recovery.  VDI improves the productivity of our teachers and administrative staff, as well as lab users by providing instant access to the latest operating systems and applications anytime and anywhere, using their choice of electronic devices.”

The IBM SmartCloud Desktop Infrastructure solutions come fully-tested across hardware, software and services to help streamline IT administration and help take the guess workout out of the transition to a virtual desktop environment.  The offerings were created in collaboration with leading solutions providers such as Citrix, Virtual Bridges and VMware.

The IBM System x powered solutions are immediately available worldwide in configurations to match a client’s individual desktop management requirements.  You can learn more about this new solution in the video below.

POWER Overload

IBM announced today a slew of new servers, services, and software to help minimize the rising costs and complexities of operating modern data centers.

These new offerings are intended to help IBM clients around the globe reap the benefits of IBM’s three-year, $3 billion (U.S.) investment in POWER7 systems that are primed to handle new workloads and perform powerful, real-time business analytics.

The announcement includes new blade servers (see image below) built on IBM’s POWER7 workload-optimized systems’ design and new systems software design to reduce time to workload deployment.  They also include new services to help remotely implement the systems (and in turn reduce deployment costs by 25%).

In the announcement, IBM also announced that the POWER7 technology achieved record performance for a range of workloads.the same 64-bit POWER® technology at work in some of the world’s most critical data centers in government, research, finance and high-tech industries, among others.

The IBM BladeCenter PS700 takes advantage of the workload optimization features of POWER7 technology.

There are many facets and contours to this announcement, so to get the full read I would recommend you check out this press announcement and then follow the links to the information that will be most useful to you.

But make no mistake as to the headline here: More computing capacity at a lower price point designed to optimize your workloads faster in the pursuit of more actionable business insights.