[nylug-announce] IBM Launches "Big Green Linux" Initiative

[Jim Gleason]

IBM Launches "Big Green Linux" Initiative


Company Announces New Products, Services and Customers Supporting
Energy-Efficient Data Centers and Open Source

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 07 Aug 2007: LinuxWorld - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today
announced a Big Green Linux initiative to help its clients further
integrate Linux into the enterprise as a way to reduce costs and energy
consumption by building cooler data centers.


The Big Green Linux initiative supports Project Big Green, a broad
commitment that IBM announced in May to sharply reduce data center energy
consumption for IBM and its clients.


The announcement was made at a press conference this morning at the opening
of the LinuxWorld and Next Generation Data Center tradeshows in San
Francisco. Supporting IBM in the event, which included announcements of new
products, customers and services, were representatives from the Linux
Foundation and Novell.


"With every release of our SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, Novell finds new
ways to help customers reduce power consumption through improvements in
policy-driven power management and system monitors for servers, along with
better suspend functionality for laptops," said Roger Levy, senior vice
president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "We
look forward to collaborating with IBM on ways we can improve integration
between hardware and software to save customers both energy and money."


"Businesses, governments and clients around the world are all actively
searching for ways to build cooler and more energy-efficient data centers
as a way to reduce costs and address environmental concerns," says Inna
Kuznetsova, IBM's global executive for Linux. "Customers are increasingly
turning to the Linux-consolidation capabilities of IBM's System z and
System p platforms, which is one reason IBM estimates that approximately
30% of IBM's Linux-related server revenue now comes from non-x86
platforms."


IBM Paves The Way
IBM signaled its Big Green Linux initiative last week when the company
announced that it plans to consolidate approximately 3,900 of its own
computer servers on to about 30 System z mainframes running the Linux
operating system. IBM anticipates that the new server environment will
consume approximately 80 percent less energy than the current set up,
resulting in significant savings over five years in energy, software and
system support costs.


With more than 8,000,000 square feet of data-center space for its employees
and commercial workloads for clients, IBM operates the world's largest and
most sophisticated data-center operations, with major locations located
worldwide. The company anticipates that the new global infrastructure,
supporting over 350,000 users, will serve as a powerful example of IBM's
ongoing transformation toward cutting-edge data center design for large
enterprises around the world. Since 1997, IBM has consolidated its
strategic worldwide data centers from 155 to seven.


Information Server Blade
IBM continues to deliver new Linux-driven products to the market that will
help clients reduce energy consumption. One such product is the Information
Server Blade running Linux, the industry's first data virtualization
offering designed to usher in a new era in information management. The new
system simplifies large data integration projects providing an
enterprise-wide view of information, resulting in better business insight
and real-time access to trusted information.


IBM Information Server Blade running Linux delivers a pre-tested and
optimized solution including hardware, software and services to help
simplify large data integration projects and making IBM's information
integration platform quicker to deploy. With unlimited capability to scale
to handle large volumes of data, the Information Server Blade furthers
IBM's global Information on Demand initiative, which is enabling clients to
gain a competitive business advantage through new and innovative uses of
information. The modular, scalable, high-performance Information Server
Blade consolidates and moves massive amounts of data to increase business
insight and manage growing information overload problems.


Linux: The Next Generation
IBM's Linux Technology Center has also been involved in contributing a
number of recent features to the Linux kernel for scaling CPU clock speed
and voltage and keeping idle CPUs in a 'tickless,' low-power state longer;
all of which make Linux more power efficient in datacenters.


"At the Linux Foundation, we've realized that while there have been many
recent advances in Linux power management, there are still new, untapped
ways to make Linux more green," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the
Linux Foundation. "Our Green Linux initiative will leverage the power of
our members, including IBM, to enhance these improvements. We expect Linux
to be a leader in this area, and for Linux customers, and the environment,
to realize the gains brought about by our members' efforts. We applaud IBM
for continuing to focus their efforts in this important area."


Open Source and Linux Software and Services
Continuing its active participation in the rapidly growing open source
ecosystem, IBM today announced further products and partnerships designed
to help both enterprise and SMB customers integrate open source effectively
into their IT infrastructure. These solutions also address key challenges
for customers wanting to use open source, including support, integration,
and interoperability between open source and private source software.


IBM and Novell announced an agreement to join forces to capture a larger
piece of the growing open source application server market. Under the
agreement, Novell will deliver and support WebSphere Application Server
Community Edition (WAS CE) as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, making
it the industry's most comprehensive open source-based server offering.


The agreement comes on the heels of the one millionth distribution of WAS,
IBM's open source-based application server, which is based on Apache
Geronimo and free to download and use.


IBM and Novell also announced the availability of an open collaboration
client solution delivered through business partners, which provides
businesses a fast and easy way to install integrated email, instant
messaging and office productivity tools on a Linux desktop. Built on the
Eclipse open framework and powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from
Novell, the open collaboration client consists of industry leading software
products including IBM Lotus Notes with IBM office productivity editors and
IBM Lotus Sametime.


IBM is also continuing the expansion of its portfolio of Linux Server
service products with the announcement of IBM Implementation Services for
Linux -- High Availability Clusters. This cost effective and energy
efficient service is designed to provide highly available services
throughout the enterprise by consolidating distributed servers onto Linux
high availability clusters.

Project Big Green: Applying energy efficient technology, products, skills
and services to help you reduce data center energy consumption.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/optimizeit/cost_efficiency/energy_efficiency/?&ca=qapromo-s0stg-b0stg-l0opit-d0stgmkt-n003-o0costenergy-g0usen

- Jim Gleason.
jgleason at us.ibm.com