December 29, 2008

Sara Lee and IBM Sign Seven-Year Global Services Agreement

IBM today announced that it has signed a seven-year agreement with Sara Lee Corporation to manage and maintain pieces of the consumer products company's global back office operations. IBM will manage a portion of Sara Lee's North American and European Finance (transaction processing) and Global Information Services (applications development and maintenance) groups, as well as the company's global indirect procurement activities.

December 22, 2008

IBM Signs Agreement With the Czech Republic Ministry of Finance

IBM Czech Republic today signed an agreement worth approximately $100 million with the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic to deliver and implement the Treasury Integrated Information System. The contract was signed based on the recommendation of the tender commission nominated by the Czech Government. The Treasury Integrated Information System is designed to enable the transparent administration of state finance providing efficient handling of state budget resources and public finance. The Treasury Integrated Information System is already deployed by many European Union member states.

December 18, 2008

IBM Announces Definitive Results of Tender Offers for ILOG Following Expiration of the Subsequent Offering Period

IBM today announced that the French Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) published the definitive results of IBM's tender offers in France and the United States for ILOG following the expiration of the subsequent offering period. These results indicate that, as of the expiration of the subsequent offering period on December 15, 2008, in aggregate an additional 913,865 ordinary shares (including ordinary shares represented by ADSs) had been tendered into the tender offers. When combined with the 19,664,945 ordinary shares (including ordinary shares represented by ADSs) tendered into the tender offers during the initial offering period that expired on November 24, 2008, these results indicate that IBM will hold 20,578,810 ordinary shares, representing 96.83 percent of the voting rights and the share capital of ILOG, on an issued and outstanding basis as of December 15, 2008.

Accordingly, IBM will accept all the ordinary shares and ADSs tendered during the subsequent offering period and expects that the settlement of the tender offers and the payment of the cash consideration in respect of the tendered ordinary shares will occur on December 24, 2008. As the securities not tendered into the tender offers represent less than 5 percent of the voting rights and the share capital of ILOG, IBM requested today the implementation of a squeeze-out of the ordinary shares held by minority shareholders. The AMF is expected to announce the date of the implementation of the squeeze-out on December 19, 2008. The trading of the ordinary shares will be suspended as of December 19, 2008, and the ordinary shares will be delisted from Euronext upon the implementation of the squeeze-out. As of December 19, 2008, ADSs will be placed on a trading halt. The quotation of ADSs on the NASDAQ Global Select Market will be terminated upon the implementation of the squeeze-out or shortly thereafter. ILOG will terminate the registration of its ordinary shares and ADSs under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, when it becomes eligible to do so.

December 10, 2008

Friends Provident Signs £200 Million Deal With IBM to Outsource IT and Infrastructure Services

Friends Provident today announces that it has appointed IBM to manage its IT requirements and deliver its future infrastructure services in a 10 year deal worth over £200 million. The deal will generate potential annual cost savings for Friends Provident initially of around £6 million a year which are expected to increase over the term of the contract. The agreement, which supports Friends Provident's strategy, includes every aspect of the technology infrastructure including software, hardware and services. It also provides an opportunity for all hardware to be refreshed and in future the ability to provide mainframe capacity on demand through IBM's cloud computing technology.

December 01, 2008

IBM Announces Final Results of Tender Offers for ILOG

IBM today announced that the French Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) published the final results of IBM's tender offers in France and the United States for ILOG. These results indicate that, as of the expiration of the tender offers on November 24, 2008, 19,664,945 ordinary shares had been tendered into the tender offers (including ordinary shares represented by ADSs). In addition, 32,000 warrants (no 1) issued by ILOG in 2003, 16,000 warrants (no 2) issued by ILOG in 2003, 46,000 warrants issued by ILOG in 2004, 48,000 warrants issued

November 28, 2008

IBM Announces Provisional Results of Tender Offers for ILOG

IBM today announced that the French Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) published the provisional results of IBM's tender offers in France and the United States for ILOG. These results indicate that, as of the expiration of the tender offers on November 24, 2008, 19,664,945 ordinary shares had been tendered into the tender offers (including ordinary shares represented by ADSs). In addition, 32,000 warrants (no 1) issued by ILOG in 2003, 16,000 warrants (no 2) issued by ILOG in 2003, 46,000 warrants issued by ILOG in 2004, 48,000 warrants.

November 21, 2008

Agreement with Plasmon

IBM and Plasmon announced today that they have come to an agreement regarding a dispute involving Steven Murphy, former CEO and President of Softek Storage Holding, Inc., and current CEO of Plasmon, Inc. In 2007, IBM acquired Softek. As part of the acquisition, IBM entered into a Holder Agreement with Mr. Murphy which contains provisions prohibiting Mr. Murphy from soliciting and hiring certain IBM employees after he left IBM.

After Mr. Murphy’s departure from IBM, and subsequent announcement as CEO as Plasmon plc and Plasmon, Inc., he engaged in conversations with and offered employment to several IBM employees in violation of his Holder Agreement. Prior to their employment with IBM, these employees were all employed by Softek. As a result of these solicitations and hirings, a dispute arose concerning the interpretation and application of the terms of the Holder Agreement. In order to resolve any claims arising out of the dispute, Mr. Murphy and Plasmon have entered into a confidential settlement agreement with IBM, including an undisclosed amount of damages resulting from the hiring of IBM employees by Mr. Murphy.

November 20, 2008

More Than 5,000 Customers Moved to IBM Systems From HP, Sun and EMC

IBM today announced that since 2004, more than 5,000 companies worldwide have replaced their HP, Sun, and EMC products with energy-efficient IBM Systems and Storage. Companies have invested in IBM's System z, Power and System x servers as well as IBM Storage to tackle their most challenging business objectives and to help reduce sprawling data center costs for labor, energy and real estate.

November 18, 2008

IBM Announces Plans to Acquire Transitive

IBM today announced it plans to acquire Transitive Corporation, a privately held technology company headquartered in Los Gatos, California, with a research and development team in Manchester, United Kingdom. Financial terms were not disclosed. Transitive is a leader in cross-platform virtualization and a pioneer in developing technologies that allow applications written for one type of microprocessor and operating system to run on multiple platforms -- with little or no modification. As a result, the technology will enable customers to consolidate their Linux-based applications onto the IBM systems that make the most sense for their business needs.

November 17, 2008

IBM Extends U.S. Tender Offer for ILOG

IBM today announced it has extended its tender offer in the United States for all outstanding ordinary shares (including shares represented by American Depositary Shares (ADSs) held by any holder, wherever located) and warrants of ILOG until 12:00 noon, EST, on November 24, 2008. The tender offer in the United States was originally scheduled to expire at 12:00 noon, EST, on November 17, 2008. As of 5:00 p.m., EST, on November 14, 2008, the aggregate number of ADSs (representing an equal number of ILOG ordinary shares) that have been tendered into, and not withdrawn from, the tender offer in the United States, was 1,563,584 or approximately 69.8% of all outstanding ADSs.

November 12, 2008

IBM Receives European Commission Clearance on ILOG Acquisition and Announces Timetable for Tender Offer in France

IBM and ILOG today announced that they have been informed of the European Commission's decision, dated November 10, 2008, to approve the proposed acquisition of ILOG by IBM. The antitrust review process in the United States was successfully completed on August 15, 2008, prior to the commencement of the tender offers in France and the United States. Therefore, the condition regarding receipt of all necessary antitrust clearances, approvals and decisions from the European Union has been fulfilled and there are no remaining.

November 10, 2008

IBM and Sapa Expand Business Agreement

IBM and Sapa have signed an extension to an existing seven year services contract. Sapa is the largest provider of aluminium profiles in the world, and part of the Norwegian industrial conglomerate Orkla. In terms of the new agreement, signed in October 2008, IBM will provide infrastructure services and application maintenance services for an additional 2,500 PC users in the Sapa system, double the number of users as stated in the original contract which was signed in 2007. The main focus of the overall agreement is on achieving cost efficiencies and improved quality of services. Several applications will be hosted by IBM, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). IBM will also host Sapa's e-mail and printing systems. The agreement is part of the Shared Services Initiative across the entire Orkla Group.

October 28, 2008

IBM Board Approves Quarterly Cash Dividend

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per common share, payable December 10, 2008, to stockholders of record November 10, 2008.

October 21, 2008

IBM Helps Develop Future IT and Business Professionals in Ghana

The IBM Corporate Service Corps is collaborating with the Ghana Multimedia Incubator Center (GMIC) -- part of the Ghanaian Ministry of Communications -- the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) to drive business growth in Ghana. IBM is helping the organizations launch the country’s first Pre-incubation Center for business development and offering workshops to prepare students and women entrepreneurs for careers in technology and business. The Pre- incubation Center is a testing ground for new business ideas involving collaboration technology.

October 14, 2008

IBM Opens New Research Center in China

IBM today announced the opening of a new research facility in Shanghai that will provide greater accessibility for clients to tap into IBM Research expertise and greater opportunities for collaboration with universities and other research institutions in China. The new facility is an extension of the IBM China Research Laboratory -- one of IBM's eight research labs worldwide focused on delivering high-value technological innovations that help solve clients' most challenging business and technology problems. The IBM China Research Laboratory was established in Beijing in 1995.

October 16, 2008

IBM Reports 2008 Third-Quarter Results

• Net income of $2.8 billion, up 20 percent;

• Total revenues of $25.3 billion, up 5 percent;

• Global Technology Services revenues up 8 percent; pre-tax income up 16 percent;

• Global Business Services revenues up 7 percent; pre-tax income up 39 percent;

• Total services pre-tax margin at six-year high;

• Services signings of $12.7 billion, down 4 percent; short-term services signings up 13 percent;

• Software revenues up 12 percent; pre-tax income up 19 percent;

• System z mainframe revenues up 25 percent;

• EMEA revenues up 10 percent; Asia Pacific up 6 percent; Americas up 3 percent;

• Revenues from growth markets up 13 percent.

 

October 16, 2008

IBM Invests £2 Million in Scotland for New UK Services Business to Run Mid-Sized Enterprise Data Centers

IBM today announced plans to open a new Collocation data center at its Greenock facility in Scotland. The data center delivers services to help mid-sized enterprises consolidate and centralize their information technology (IT) infrastructures in a single secure and resilient location, allowing them to significantly reduce costs and staff management time. The center offers facilities typically only available to large enterprises such as energy efficient cooling, dedicated electric infrastructure backed up by diesel generators, 24 hour security, alarm monitoring and CCTV, and resilient internet connections. In addition to IBM equipment, customer-owned equipment will be welcomed in the data center, giving clients the choice of retaining management and monitoring responsibility for the equipment (Collocation), or requesting IBM to perform basic management and monitoring functions (Collocation Plus). Clients can move their existing back-office hardware to the facility and manage it remotely.

September 24, 2008

IBM Opens Four Cloud Computing Centers to Meet Growing Demand in Emerging Markets

IBM today opened four new cloud computing centers in emerging markets. They are in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bangalore, India; Seoul, Korea; and Hanoi, Vietnam, where there is an increasing demand for Internet-based computing models and skills to help companies compete in highly competitive environments. With previously opened centers in both emerging and mature markets, IBM now has 13 cloud computing centers, the world's largest network of expertise on cloud computing. For nearly a year, IBM has been building cloud computing infrastructures for clients around the world and establishing cloud projects in IBM cloud computing environments. The centers are available for clients across multiple industries such as banking, telecommunications, government, education, and hosting services.

September 18, 2008

ista and IBM Sign IT Innovation Agreement

ista, the world's biggest consumption-dependent billing provider of energy, water and ancillary, and IBM have signed an agreement for the operation and further development of ista's information technology (IT) infrastructure. The agreement was signed in August of 2008. As part of the contract, IBM will operate the infrastructure for ista's business applications and billing systems and support ista in its further roll-out and business development. IBM will operate the front-office services and the management of ista's IT infrastructure at several locations in Germany.

IBM Opens CRM Center of Excellence for SaaS

IBM today announced the launch of a Center of Excellence (CoE) for Software as a Service (SaaS). Using decision-support tools and implementation assets developed specifically for the SaaS platform, the CoE will assist organizations worldwide in evaluating, implementing, and driving value from SaaS for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). To help its clients be successful with SaaS, the IBM CoE for SaaS has developed evaluation models to assist with decision making and planning, and demonstration environments to preview SaaS capabilities. The CoE has also established an internal network of SaaS subject matter experts, so that IBM consultants on project teams can easily identify best practices and bring proven approaches to the implementation of SaaS solutions for their CRM clients. The CoE also takes advantage of IBM's cloud computing infrastructure, which provides a uniform and consistent platform where IBM CRM experts worldwide can link together to rapidly deliver these services.

September 17, 2008

IBM Unveils New EUR 30 Million Data Center and Global Supply Chain Hub in Dublin

Today, IBM and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced an investment of EUR 30 million in a next generation data center at IBM's Technology Campus, Dublin. This new facility, which is fully owned and operated by IBM, will provide a wide range of new and cost effective IT Services for the Irish marketplace. The center will also serve as a global hub for delivering IBM Software to clients in 84 countries worldwide. The data center is designed using IBM Research energy-efficient green strategies and technology innovations that optimize space, power cooling and resiliency while reducing costs and supporting business growth. Clients using this center will have access to massive internet-scale computing capabilities, while gaining the cost and environmental protection advantages of IBM's industry leading energy efficiency data center design and research.

IBM Opens Center for Social Software

IBM today announced the creation of the IBM Center for Social Software, bringing together the brightest minds from IBM to work with clients, partners, university students and faculty, creating the industry’s premier incubator for the research, development and testing of social software. The ability to form and interact within a community is becoming increasingly important as Internet-based technologies make their way into corporate environments and companies seek to collaborate more with their customers, partners and employees. The goal of the IBM Center is to create a new type of collaborative environment to tackle some of the toughest questions about social software, identify new business models, help discover next-generation Web 2.0 applications, and determine how and why people form viral communities and the implications they have on our daily lives.

August 20, 2008

IBM Commits $300 Million to Expand Business Continuity and Resiliency Services

IBM today announced it is investing US$300 million to construct 13 Business Resilience service delivery centers in 10 countries in 2008, increasing its ability to address surging demand from businesses and governments from around the world seeking to keep their operations safe from disruption. The massive infrastructure expansion is the largest of its kind and will permit IBM clients to access services that support business continuity for the first time from a cloud computing environment. Business continuity and resiliency services help ensure uninterrupted operations across all layers of the business, as well as helping businesses avoid, prepare and recover from a disruption. IBM is the world's leader in providing services that help avoid disruption and enable business continuity.

August 01, 2008

IBM Unveils Plans for $360 Million Data Center in North Carolina

IBM announced today plans to build a $360 million state-of-the-art data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina. The data center will include new technologies and services that will enable IBM to deliver Cloud Computing capabilities to clients. Cloud computing uses advanced technologies and global delivery mechanisms to enable individuals to access information and services from any device with extremely high levels of availability and quality of experience.

IBM Launches Cloud Computing Center in Tokyo

Today, IBM will unveil its ninth cloud computing center worldwide in Tokyo, Japan. The center will give large enterprise customers, universities and governments immediate access to the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications, and deliver new and innovative services to their customers. In established markets like Japan, organizations have extensive, mature technology infrastructures that in many cases have become complex and inflexible over years of adding and subtracting pieces. New applications of technology, such as mobile commerce, broadband over power lines, Web 2.0 applications and self-publishing, and real-time data streams, are stretching the capacity of these systems to their limits. The world's information infrastructure was not meant to handle this kind of computing -- especially in mature markets.

August 01, 2008

Taizo Nishimuro Elected to IBM Board of Directors

The IBM board of directors today elected Taizo Nishimuro to the board, effective September 22, 2008. Mr. Nishimuro, 72, is chairman of the board of the Tokyo Stock Exchange Group, Inc.

July 29, 2008

IBM Board Approves Quarterly Cash Dividend

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per common share, payable September 10, 2008, to stockholders of record August 8, 2008.

July 28, 2008

IBM Accelerates Investments in Emerging Markets

IBM today announced it has opened three centers of excellence in China, Mexico and India to provide clients with access to the latest technologies and processes in banking, retail and service management arenas. IBM's focus on emerging markets -- or countries with high economic growth potential -- has accelerated. These countries represented 18 percent of IBM's geographic revenue in the second quarter of 2008, and together grew 21 percent as reported. In addition, the Brazil, Russia, India and China subset grew 31 percent in the second quarter and were led by explosive growth in India.

IBM Announces Plans to Acquire ILOG

IBM and ILOG today announced they have signed an agreement regarding a proposed acquisition by IBM of ILOG to be implemented by way of concurrent cash public tender offers in both France and the United States. Through this proposed transaction, IBM will combine its business process management (BPM), business optimization, and service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies with ILOG’s Business Rules Management Systems software. This will enable IBM to help clients deliver critical business information in real-time, allowing them to make better business decisions faster.

The cash tender offer will be at a price of €10 per ordinary share and the U.S. dollar equivalent per American Depositary Share (“ADS”) based on the Euro/U.S. dollar exchange rate as of the settlement of the tender offers, amounting to an aggregate purchase price of approximately €215 million or approximately $US340 million on a fully diluted basis. This price represents a premium of approximately 56 percent compared to ILOG's one month average of closing share prices prior to July 28, 2008, and a 37 percent premium to the closing price of Friday, July 25.

July 02, 2008

IBM Acquires Platform Solutions

IBM today announced it has acquired Platform Solutions, Inc. (PSI), a privately held technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. PSI's technologies and employees will become part of the IBM System z business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms were not disclosed. PSI's technologies and skills, along with its intellectual capital, will become part of IBM's long-term mainframe product engineering cycles and part of IBM's future product plans.

May 27, 2008

IBM Opens New Global Delivery Center in Pune, India

IBM today inaugurated a new Global Delivery Center (GDC) in Pune to provide clients worldwide with business consulting and application services. This is IBM Global Business Services' (GBS) fourth site in Pune, and it will expand the scope of business and technology expertise already available to clients through its globally integrated network of delivery centers. The Pune site joins IBM's network of 20 business consulting and application services centers located in eight countries around the world. These centers, which utilize world-class tools and automation technologies from IBM Research, are established as 'centers of excellence' with professionals who are uniquely skilled and equipped to serve client needs by industry. This globally integrated approach provides the fundamental underpinning for IBM Global Business Services, enabling the company to define the professional services industry with its clients.

April 29, 2008

IBM Acquires InfoDyne to Create World-Class Platform for Market Data Delivery

IBM today announced it has acquired InfoDyne Corporation, a privately held software company based in Park Ridge, Illinois. InfoDyne is a leader in high-speed platforms and data feed connectors which combined with IBM's WebSphere technology will help clients extend transactional integrity to low-latency environments. Financial details were not disclosed. InfoDyne provides software that is designed to enable today's highly competitive trading firms and other venues to process exploding data volumes at microsecond response rates. InfoDyne's market data delivery platform and rich feed handler portfolio take data from hundreds of sources and deliver it in a standardized format, helping customers to control escalating data feed costs

IBM Board Approves 25 Percent Increase in Quarterly Cash Dividend

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per common share, payable June 10, 2008, to stockholders of record May 9, 2008.

April 21, 2008

IBM Completes Acquisition of FilesX

IBM today announced it has completed its acquisition of FilesX, a privately held storage software company based in Newton, Mass., and Haifa, Israel. FilesX specializes in continuous data protection and nearly instant data and application recovery software for enterprises and remote/branch offices. Financial terms were not disclosed. IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire FilesX on April 10, 2008. The FilesX technology will become part of the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) family of products, IBM's flagship suite of leading data protection and information infrastructure offerings, with proven compatibility in customer environments today.

April 18, 2008

IBM Acquires Storage Company Diligent Technologies

IBM today announced it has acquired Diligent Technologies, a privately held storage "de-duplication" technology company headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts with research and development located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Diligent's technologies and employees will become part of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms were not disclosed. Diligent develops in-line data de-duplication software that is integrated with server and storage infrastructures to help organizations significantly reduce the amount and cost of physical storage required in data centers. Enterprise and mid-sized organizations are faced with data centers that are reaching a breaking point of complexity and manageability, while at the same time experiencing explosive demands for storage for new data, transactions, email and back-up files.

April 16, 2008

IBM Reports 2008 First-Quarter Results

• Diluted earnings of $1.65 per share, up 36 percent;
• Total revenues of $24.5 billion, up 11 percent;
• Global Technology Services revenues up 17 percent; pre-tax income up 45 percent;
• Global Business Services revenues up 17 percent; pre-tax income up 23 percent;
• Software revenues up 14 percent; pre-tax income up 22 percent;
• 65 percent of revenues from outside the U.S.; E/ME/A revenues up 16 percent; Asia Pacific up 14 percent; U.S. up 6 percent;
• Services signings of $10.8 billion at constant currency; $12.6 billion at actual rates.
  
  

April 03, 2008

IBM Completes Acquisition of Telelogic AB

IBM today announced the completion of its approximately $845 million USD (approximately 5 billion Swedish Kronor) tender offer for the shares of Telelogic AB (Nordic Exchange/MidCap/TLOG). The tender offer, announced on June 11, 2007, was finalized after IBM obtained acceptance from 96.9 percent of stock ownership in Telelogic as well as satisfaction of other conditions of the offer, including necessary worldwide regulatory approvals. Telelogic is a leading provider of software to develop technical systems and enterprise architecture, and has more than 8,000 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Malmo, Sweden, and Irvine, California, Telelogic has more than 1,200 employees and operations in 22 countries around the world.

March 12, 2008

IBM Acquires Encentuate

IBM today announced it has acquired Encentuate, Inc., a privately held company based in Redwood City, California, and a leading provider of identity and access management software focused on enterprise single sign-on and integration of strong authentication technology. IBM will integrate Encentuate into IBM Software Group’s Tivoli division. Financial terms were not disclosed. Encentuate’s strength lies within its industry-leading ability to track and facilitate identity usage while helping to increase user productivity. It can reduce the burden of remembering different passwords, rules and user IDs while helping to improve security by automatically managing user passwords, sign-ons, sign-offs and enforcing security policies. It allows IT administrators to quickly integrate legacy and new applications to leverage the Encentuate single sign-on technology.

February 26, 2008

IBM Board of Directors Authorizes $15 Billion for Stock Repurchase

The IBM board of directors today authorized $15 billion in additional funds for use in the company’s stock repurchase program. This amount is in addition to approximately $0.4 billion remaining at the end of February from a prior authorization. With this new authorization, IBM will have approximately $15.4 billion for its stock repurchase program. IBM said it expects to spend up to $12 billion on stock repurchases in 2008. The company said it may repurchase shares on the open market or in private transactions depending on market conditions, and that it expects to use cash from operations for the repurchases.

February 19, 2008

IBM Completes Acquisition of Net Integration Technologies Inc

IBM today announced it has completed the acquisition of Net Integration Technologies Inc. ,a Toronto, Canada-based, privately held company that offers a complete business server software solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Financial details were not disclosed. Net Integration Technologies provides server software for small to medium businesses that is simple and easy to maintain. The Net Integration server software solution is designed for businesses with limited or no in-house technical resources and it enables business owners to focus on growing their businesses rather than wasting time and money trying to run their office systems.

February 01, 2008

IBM Completes Acquisition of Arsenal Digital Solutions

IBM today announced it has completed its acquisition of Arsenal Digital Solutions. Arsenal is a privately held company based in Cary, North Carolina, with a comprehensive suite of on-demand data protection solutions. IBM had announced an agreement to acquire Arsenal on December 6, 2007. With the acquisition complete, Arsenal will be integrated into the Business Continuity and Resiliency Services (BCRS) business unit in IBM Global Technology Services. With the acquisition of Arsenal, IBM can provide global clients with security-rich information protection services designed to handle increasing data retention requirements. Arsenal's services are already used by thousands of clients in a wide range of industries including healthcare, hospitality and manufacturing.

December 19, 2008

IBM Scientists Develop World's Fastest Graphene Transistor

IBM Researchers today announced that they demonstrated the operation of graphene field-effect transistors at GHz frequencies, and achieved the highest frequencies reported so far using this novel non-silicon electronic material. This accomplishment is an important milestone for the Carbon Electronics for RF Applications (CERA) program sponsored by DARPA, as part of the effort to develop the next-generation of communication devices. The operation speed of a transistor is determined by the size of the device and the speed at which electrons travel. The size dependence was one of the driving forces to pursue ever-shrinking Si transistors in semiconductor industries. A key advantage of graphene lies in the very high electron speed with which electrons propagate in it, essential for achieving high-speed, high-performance transistors.

Now, IBM scientists have fabricated nanoscale graphene field-effect transistors and demonstrated the operation of graphene transistors at the GHz frequency range. More importantly, the scaling behavior, i.e. the size dependence of the performance of the graphene transistors was established for the first time. The team found that the operation frequency increases with diminishing device dimension and achieved a cut-off frequency of 26 GHz for graphene transistors with a gate length of 150 nm, the highest frequency obtained for graphene so far.

December 16, 2008

Toshiba, IBM, and AMD Develop World’s Smallest FinFET SRAM Cell with High-k/Metal Gate

Toshiba Corporation, IBM, and AMD today announced that they have together developed a Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cell that has an area of only 0.128 square micrometers (µm2), the world’s smallest functional SRAM cell that makes use of fin-shaped Field Effect Transistors (FinFETs). The cell, developed with a high-k/metal gate (HKMG) material, offers advantages over planar-FET cells for future technology generations. SRAM cells are circuit components in most systems-level, large-scale integrated circuits such as microprocessors, and smaller SRAM cells can help provide smaller, faster processors that consume less power.

November 24, 2008

IBM Launches New Cloud Computing Consulting and Implementation Services

Today, IBM announced new cloud computing services to help businesses of all sizes take advantage of this increasingly-attractive computing model. With today's announcements, IBM is applying its industry-specific consulting expertise and established technology record to offer secure, practical services to companies in public, private and hybrid cloud models.

• Industry-specific Business Consulting Services for Cloud Computing - IBM Global Business Services will use an economic model for assessing the total cost of ownership for building private clouds, and/or moving data and applications off-site in a public or hybrid cloud model.

• Technology Consulting, Design and Implementation Services - IBM Global Technology Services is announcing new services to help clients install, configure and deliver cloud computing inside the data center.
• Cloud Security - Spanning IBM Systems, Software, Services and IBM's lauded Research and X-Force arms, this effort is aimed at re-architecting and re-designing technologies and processes, to infuse security and shield against threats and vulnerabilities in the cloud.

IBM to Validate Resiliency of Cloud Computing Infrastructures

In a move that could spur the rise of the nascent computing model known as "cloud," IBM today said it would introduce a program to validate the resiliency of any company delivering applications or services to clients in the cloud environment. As a result, customers can quickly and easily identify trustworthy providers that have passed a rigorous evaluation, enabling them to more quickly and confidently reap the business benefits of cloud services. IBM's new "Resilient Cloud Validation" program will allow businesses who collaborate with IBM on a rigorous, consistent and proven program of benchmarking and design validation to use the IBM logo: "Resilient Cloud" when marketing their services.

November 19, 2008

New IBM Cognos Analytic Software Offers Banks Faster, Accurate Credit Risk Insights

Cognos, an IBM company and a world leader in business intelligence and performance management, today unveiled new analytic software designed to provide retail banks with complete access to accurate, timely and transparent credit risk information across their loan portfolios. IBM Cognos 8 Banking Risk Performance – Credit Risk is a packaged business intelligence (BI) application that gives bank executives and risk managers an immediate, up-to-date and comprehensive view of their credit portfolio across products, geographies and business units. Built on an open, services-oriented architecture platform, the new solution plugs into an organization’s existing technology environment, letting users easily tap into their credit risk data housed in financial, core lending and other administrative systems to gain an accurate, up-to-date understanding of loan performance and its current and long-term effect on profitability.

November 18, 2008

IBM Launches “Smart Business”

IBM today announced the availability of “IBM Smart Business,” a breakthrough way for small and medium businesses to acquire, use and manage technology that is radically simple. Two years ago as part of IBM "Innovation Jam," the largest online brainstorm ever held, more than 150,000 people from over 100 countries converged to discuss ways in which technology could enable advancements in everyday life. One of the biggest issues identified was the tremendous need to make IT less complex for small and medium businesses. IBM’s answer to this issue will get its first market test in the entrepreneurial Indian marketplace which boasts more than 35 million small and medium businesses. With the introduction of Smart Business, IBM aims to fuel the growth of these businesses by delivering ready-to-use IT that is easy to implement, operate and grow.

November 13, 2008

IBM Unveils New Servers With Enhanced Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) Processors

IBM today announced four IBM servers that will feature the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processor. The new servers provide the IT efficiency needed in a new enterprise data center, with the BladeCenter LS42 using 16 percent less power than competitive blade offerings. IBM will deliver new 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based systems that offer exceptional power-efficiency, performance and virtualization capabilities for today's most demanding datacenters.

October 27, 2008

IBM Announces Industry’s First Universal Database Cache

Today IBM announced IBM solidDB Universal Cache, relational, in-memory database technology that accelerates not only IBM’s relational databases, but also other industry-leading databases. solidDB Universal Cache integrates with relational, disk-based databases to accelerate access to their data. This acceleration can be particularly valuable for performance-critical data frequently accessed by many concurrent users, typical of applications such as ticketing and reservation systems, e-commerce applications, event processing and alerting, online gaming, and software as a service (SaaS) application platforms. Additionally, data from leading disk-based, relational databases can be cached into solidDB Universal Cache to help support peak workloads experienced by such applications as customer service and stock trading.

October 21, 2008

IBM Unveils Next-Generation Storage Offerings To Help Mainframe Clients

IBM today announced new innovations in information infrastructure storage solutions for IBM System z environments, featuring next generation tape and disk storage offerings to integrate with the just announced IBM System z10 Business Class mainframe. These IBM storage offerings are designed to help clients simplify their storage infrastructures, support business continuity, safeguard their information and extract more value from their System z mainframe environments.

October 06, 2008

IBM Launches Cloud Services Initiative

IBM today launched a company-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications with new software, services and technical resources for clients and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). IBM's new cloud services can help businesses of all sizes more easily adopt cloud computing models to better manage data, lower operational costs and make collaboration easier. Businesses face a unique set of challenges as they look to grow in a globally integrated economy. A perfect storm of data deluge, a fluid regulatory environment and widening information technology (IT) skills gaps is placing additional cost pressures on top of already resource-strapped organizations. As a result, businesses are looking for new ways to drive more value out of their IT infrastructures and free up resources for strategic growth investments.

September 23, 2008

New NASA Supercomputer Will Play Critical Role as Scientists Simulate Climate, Weather and Solar Activity

IBM today announced a new supercomputer that NASA scientists will use to simulate and better understand Earth's climate and weather, the planet's relationship with the sun, and the evolution of cosmic phenomena. It will also play an essential role in developing methods to analyze the rapidly increasing amount of data the agency collects from Earth- and space-observing satellites. The NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) has selected an IBM iDataPlex cluster-style supercomputer capable of performing 42 trillion calculations per second (teraflops). The computer harnesses 1,024 quad-core Intel Xeon® processors in an all-new IBM design that dramatically improves energy efficiency and cooling requirements. The processors are being integrated with NCCS's existing "Discover" Xeon-based cluster for a combined performance of 67 teraflops.

September 02, 2008

IBM Introduces First Blade Server to Reduce Security Threats, Optimize Network Traffic

IBM announced today an intelligent blade server designed to help reduce security threats -- such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and viruses -- while helping service providers better manage network traffic for optimal performance. The IBM BladeCenter® PN41 is the first blade in the industry to support Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology from CloudShield®, an industry-leading network services management and security provider. The IBM BladeCenter PN41 more deeply examines the "packets" of data streaming across the Internet or corporate networks so they can be routed for maximum performance while helping prevent security threats.

August 18, 2008

IBM Builds World's Smallest SRAM Memory Cell

IBM and its joint development partners -- AMD, Freescale, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) -- today announced the first working static random access memory (SRAM) for the 22 nanometer (nm) technology node, the world's first reported working cell built at its 300mm research facility in Albany, NY. SRAM chips are precursors to more complex devices such as microprocessors. The SRAM cell utilizes a conventional six-transistor design and has an area of 0.1um2, breaking the previous SRAM scaling barriers. Researchers achieved this breakthrough at CNSE of the University at Albany, State University of New York. CNSE's Albany NanoTech is the world's most advanced university based nanoelectronics research complex. IBM and its partners do much of their leading-edge semiconductor research at CNSE.

August 05, 2008

IBM Announces New Products and Initiatives to Enable Next-Generation Linux

At the opening of the LinuxWorld tradeshow today, IBM introduced a series of new products, services and initiatives that further expand IBM's commitment to Linux and open source by enabling the next generation of Linux. The announcements include the first contribution of open-source software for supercomputers based on Linux; a new ISV software appliance toolkit that will expand the reach of Linux into the midmarket; pre-loading of Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 in Lotus Foundations, a hardware and software bundle geared for businesses from five employees on up; an expansion of its real-time Linux initiative; the introduction of a new version of z/VM with a dynamic memory upgrade feature available for Linux users; a planned initiative with Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat around Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony; and more.

July 15, 2008

IBM Introduces the Industry's Fastest One Terabyte Storage Tape Drive

IBM today introduced the industry’s fastest one terabyte (TB) storage tape drive, which will enable clients to protect and archive more information with less cost and less energy usage - the highest capacity and performance of any tape drive in the market. The new IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive will be able to store up to one TB of uncompressed data per tape cartridge and with a native data rate of 160 megabytes per second (MB/s), storage backups can be completed up to 54 percent faster than the previous generation drive.

March 17, 2008

IBM Researchers Develop World’s Tiniest Nanophotonic Switch to route optical data between cores in future computer chips

IBM scientists today took another significant advance towards sending information inside a computer chip by using light pulses instead of electrons by building the world’s tiniest nanophotonic switch with a footprint about 100X smaller than the cross section of a human hair.

The switch is an important building block to control the flow of information inside future chips and can significantly speed up the chip performance while using much less energy.

December 18, 2008

IBM Helps Highmark Optimize "Green" Data Center

IBM today announced it has partnered with Highmark Inc. to transform Highmark's energy-efficient data center in its Harrisburg, PA location. For Highmark, Pennsylvania's largest health insurer, a commitment toward a healthier environment will help to create healthier communities. IBM's technologies and services are aimed at helping clients sharply reduce data center energy consumption. The data center is an area of information technology (IT) that can reap substantial and lasting benefits by using 'greener' technology. IBM's analysis of Highmark's data center included a data center energy efficiency assessment and a thermal analysis using IBM's Mobile Measurement Technology (MMT), which measures 3D temperature distributions within data centers to discover where improvements are needed.

December 11, 2008

IBM Ranks #1 on Climate Change Strategies in Ceres Report

IBM was today named the top company for climate change strategy and practices, in a report released by the Ceres investor coalition. The report issued today analyzes climate change governance practices at 63 of the world's largest retail, pharmaceutical, technology, apparel and other consumer-facing companies. IBM's longstanding commitment regarding climate protection is backed by almost two decades of measuring energy efficiency and assessing climate impact. The results have been significant. For example:

• Between 1990 and 2007, IBM saved 4.6 billion kWh of electricity consumption, avoided nearly 3.1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions (equal to 45 percent of the company's 1990 global CO2 emissions) and saved over $310 million through its annual energy conservation actions alone.
• IBM's procurement of renewable energy and RECs increased from 11 million kWh in 2001 to 455 million kWh in 2007, which accounted for 8.5% of IBM's total 2007 global electricity purchases.
• To further extend these achievements IBM set a "2nd generation" goal to reduce CO2 emissions associated with IBM's energy use 12% between 2005 and 2012 through energy conservation, use of renewable energy and funding RECs.

December 08, 2008

IBM and Researchers From Harvard Launch Project to Discover Lower Cost, More Efficient Solar Cells

IBM and researchers from Harvard University are launching a new World Community Grid project to discover organic materials to create a more efficient and lower cost solar cell. The path-breaking effort will use idle computer power from volunteers to create large supplies of new clean energy. Clean energy sources like solar could supply a vast amount of the world's energy and help eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, the cause of global warming, if they were more efficient and could be developed at lower cost to make them more widely available.

Current silicon based solar cells are only about 20 per cent efficient and cost about $3 per watt of electricity generated. A newer form of solar powered cells being developed is plastic not silicon based. It holds great promise because it is flexible, lightweight and most significant is much less costly to produce. IBM will also pilot World Community Grid on a new IBM internal cloud, a network of services and software, when the cloud is not being fully used to provide more computing power to the grid. In the future, IBM plans to expand this capability to clients of IBM cloud computing services if they choose, so that they can become part of this humanitarian research.

December 02, 2008

New IBM Software Helps Companies Reduce Costs, Paper Consumption by Transforming Business Processes

IBM today announced new software to help organizations automate their business processes, thereby lowering operating costs and reducing paper consumption. With the new Jazz-based IBM Rational Requirements Composer documentation becomes more visual, digitizing lines of text into diagrams. In addition, IBM Rational Requirements Composer turns paper requirements into storyboards similar to how movies are made. These storyboards can be shared globally for in-house and outsourced teams to collaborate via the web, thereby reducing the consumption of paper by an organization.

Furthermore, IBM Rational Requirements Composer ensures a development project is aligned with business objectives, reducing project failures which cost organizations US $300 billion* annually. Currently 30% of software development projects are consumed by poor requirements definition and management, and reworking project requirements can cost an average $7,600 per project**. IBM Rational Requirements Composer's collaborative features can reduce risk by improving collaboration using Web 2.0-style linking, tagging and conversations to drive consensus amongst all levels of business and IT involved with a project. Using the IBM Jazz technology platform, IBM Rational Requirements Composer improves access to a project's requirements by all stakeholders, no matter where in the world they may reside.

November 21, 2008

Report Finds IBM Supercomputers Most Energy Efficient in the World

A new report, announced today, found that IBM supercomputers already deemed the most powerful in the world are also the most energy efficient according to the findings of the latest Supercomputing 'Green 500 List' announced by The Green500.org. The number one most energy efficient system in the world -- an IBM supercomputer based on QS22 Blade servers at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw -- produces more than 536 Mflops (millions of floating point operations per second) per watt of energy. By comparison, the first non IBM entry on the list offers about half the performance -- 240 Mflops per watt -- than IBM's number one system. The most energy efficient system from HP offer's less than half the performance -- 217 Mflops per watt -- than the top IBM system.

November 20, 2008

IBM and EDF Combine R&D Skills to Further Energy Sustainability

IBM today announced collaboration with EDF, the leading electricity producer in Europe, on an ambitious project to explore key aspects of the energy systems that are important in EDF operations, in an effort to further energy sustainability. EDF and IBM will work together to develop high performance computing solutions which can significantly advance the operation and optimization of the complex systems and processes involved in electricity production and power management. Together, the companies will develop and validate sophisticated computational solutions to model a number of complex processes critical to EDF activities. EDF expects that this common initiative will increase its ability to further advance the efficiency of its power plants. IBM expects that its work with EDF will help advance IBM's systems, software, middleware and applications capabilities in its Power Generation, Intelligent Utility Network and Advanced Water Management solutions, as well as many other industrial, environmental and research activities and lead to improved computer systems and applications designs in the future.

November 12, 2008

IBM Issues Corporate Responsibility Report

IBM issued its 2007-2008 Corporate Responsibility Report, detailing the company's performance results and strategies in the areas of governance, supply chain, environmental performance, employment policies and practices, client solutions and community engagements.

Included in the Corporate Responsibility report are:

• How IBM equips its employees to become successful global citizens through its Global Citizen's Portfolio, a suite of investments in training and development to enable employees to take on greater personal responsibility for their career development, learning, wellness and community involvement.
• The Global Citizen's Portfolio includes the Corporate Service Corps program, Personal Learning Accounts and transition programs to assist those interested in second careers.
• How IBM is minimizing its environmental impact on the planet through work-at-home programs to reduce CO2 emissions, redesigning processes to create more environmentally friendly products that leave less hazardous waste.
• Promoting social responsibility with our suppliers through a supplier code of conduct, increased diversity among suppliers and an accountability system through auditing.
• Providing expertise and technology to address societal challenges including education through the launch of PowerUp, a free 3-D multiplayer online virtual world to interest more teens in math and science, or humanitarian research through free supercomputing power for projects to develop more nutritious rice and understand climate change in Africa.
• Partnering with clients to help them address social, economic and environmental challenges through tools like Carbon Management Diagnostics or the intelligent utility network, and
• Managing integrity and citizenship in a globally integrated enterprise through efforts such as gathering leaders from across the U.S. at IBM's Forum on Global Leadership in Washington D.C., or working on intellectual property reforms and Open Standards.

October 29, 2008

IBM and University of Saskatchewan Accelerate Research to Reduce Greenhouse Gases

University of Saskatchewan and IBM today announced they will collaborate to apply new high-performance computer chips to achieve a greater understanding of how to build coal-fired electricity plants that emit less carbon dioxide. The technology will also help determine how these plants can be modified to harness carbon dioxide, before it's released, and transform it into more benign by-products or even into environmentally friendly fuels such as methanol. The U of S will be one of the first academic institutions in North America to have the IBM microprocessor technology. The collaboration is supported in part by IBM's Shared University Research (SUR) program, created to foster partnership between academia and the industry to explore research in areas essential to innovation. Through SUR, the U of S will use IBM BladeCenter hardware technology equipped with new QS22 Cell Broadband Engine processors and related services. The Cell Broadband Engine processors are commonly used in the popular Sony PlayStation 3. They were recently introduced by IBM for high-performance computing applications and can compute about 20 times faster than an ordinary computer chip-speed that is critical for the compute-intensive calculations the research requires.

October 28, 2008

IBM Addresses Information-Related Energy and Environmental Challenges

IBM today unveiled new software and services to support businesses of all sizes as they address efficiency-related challenges in dealing with the energy crisis and creating environmental business metrics. To help companies more effectively use IT assets to reduce energy consumption, IBM is announcing a new product, IBM Rational Test Lab Manager and new capabilities in Telelogic System Architect. Available today, Rational Test Lab Manager configures, builds and effectively manages the use of physical and virtual machines to help conserve energy while reducing operating costs and hardware demands. Available later this year, Telelogic System Architect’s new analytics and reporting capabilities will help organizations establish a blueprint for energy impact analysis. For example, the new Telelogic System Architect features provide analysis and virtualization of current and future power consumption by location, application, processes, strategies and staff, while executive reports help organizations plan greener IT initiatives, resulting in more energy-efficient and cost-effective business operations. Organizations will be able to download the new Telelogic System Architect capabilities at no cost from IBM.

Combining software across IBM’s portfolio, C-Lock Technology, Inc. and IBM Premiere Business Partner Enterprise Information Management, Inc. (EIM) have released a new beta version of a greenhouse gas meter called GreenCert. Developed on IBM technologies includingWebSphere Portal, Lotus and Information Management software, GreenCert helps organizations in multiple industries measure, verify, and report Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions with an emphasis on carbon management. The new version is in testing with power and utility plants in the United States and Europe.

September 24, 2008

From Cradle to Grave: IBM Consulting Offering Helps Clients Make Products "Greener" -- Cars, Electronics, Consumer Products, Etc.

A new IBM consulting offering can help clients make their products more eco-friendly from development and manufacturing through delivery and use to end-of-life reclamation and recycling. Ranging across products as diverse as cars, tractors, televisions, electric shavers, even food and clothing, the IBM Environmental Product Lifecycle Management offering assists clients in analyzing every phase of a product's existence and designing it to be environmentally friendly from the beginning. This includes considering the materials used to make and package it, the energy needed to produce it, transport and use it, and designing it to be refurbished or recycled when it's no longer useable.

August 27, 2008

IBM and United States Tennis Association Go Green at the 2008 US Open

IBM the official technology partner of the US Open, and the United States Tennis Association have teamed to offer exciting ways to help more fans than ever experience the action of the 2008 US Open. With a new array of personalized features including customized content and mobile alerts, the USOpen.org site will help fans get closer to the action of the US Open in ways not before possible. In addition, this year IBM is helping the USTA run a more environmentally-friendly US Open by helping reduce the energy consumption required to power the tournament's web site and scoring operations. The IT solution continues to allow the USTA to concentrate on its goals of building value for the US Open brand around the world, meeting revenue objectives and promoting tennis in the United States. The results of these solutions are significant:

· Consolidating from nine servers to six servers (since 2006 consolidation has gone from 60 servers to 6 servers) Since 2006, reduction of energy consumption by 23% and cooling demand reduced by 25%

· With the POWER6 implementation it is expected that energy consumption will be reduced by 40% and cooling demand reduced by 48%

· Since 2006, visits to events infrastructure have grown by 26% while the cost per visit has been reduced by 38% during the same period

· Users have increased by over 20% while the cost/user has been reduced by over 27% during the same period

July 24, 2008

Green 500 List Puts IBM Supercomputers at the Top

When it comes to supercomputing energy efficiency, IBM cannot be beaten -- that's according to the findings of the latest Supercomputing 'Green 500 List' announced by The Green500.org. In the ranking:

· IBM holds all top ten places with a number of IBM BladeCenter QS22 and LS21 Clusters and Blue Gene/P Solutions.

· Out of the first 40 ranked systems, 39 are IBM-based.

· Out of the top 100 systems, 76 systems are IBM-based.

· The top three supercomputers -- all IBM -- surpass the 400 MFLOPS/watt milestone for the first time -- with the leading system delivering almost half a GFLOP per watt.

July 18, 2008

IBM Recognized for its Green Recycling Practices by IT Analyst Firm IDC

IBM Global Asset Recovery Services, the IT equipment renewal and recycling arm of IBM, was recognized by leading IT analyst firm IDC as one of the first recipients of its Green Recycling and Asset Disposal for the Enterprise (G.R.A.D.E.) certification. According to IDC, IBM Global Asset Recovery Services, a division of IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM exceeded the minimum criteria required for G.R.A.D.E. certification, which looked at IBM’s broad range of offerings, remote applications, onsite services, logistics, in-plant processing, and post treatment. While the IDC G.R.A.D.E certification focused only on IBM Global Asset Recovery Services operations in the US, IBM operates similar facilities throughout the world.

July 17, 2008

IBM Reports 2008 Second-Quarter Results

• Diluted earnings of $1.98 per share, up 28 percent; up 32 percent without a prior-year gain from the sale of PSD;

• Total revenues of $26.8 billion, up 13 percent;

• Global Technology Services revenues up 15 percent; pre-tax income up 26 percent;

• Global Business Services revenues up 18 percent; pre-tax income up 31 percent;

• Total Services signings of $14.7 billion, up 12 percent; $12.2 billion at constant currency, up 4 percent;

• Short-term services signings up 18 percent; up 9 percent at constant currency;

• Software revenues up 17 percent; pre-tax income up 19 percent;

• Systems revenues up 10 percent; System z mainframe up 32 percent;

• E/ME/A revenues up 20 percent; Asia Pacific up 16 percent; U.S. up 5 percent;

• 18 percent of geographic revenues from growth markets, up 21 percent; up 14 percent at constant currency.

June 17, 2008

IBM Opens Its Greenest Data Center in North America

IBM officially opened its "greenest" data center in North America today at its Boulder, Colo., site. The 115,000-square-foot, energy efficient facility includes 70,000 square feet of raised floor space and is part of a $350 million investment by the corporation in Boulder to help meet customer demand worldwide for green data centers, while helping IBM and its clients reduce energy costs.

The new data center features numerous leading-edge technologies and services, including high density computing systems utilizing virtualization technology, along with energy efficient power and cooling technologies. These, in conjunction with the center's energy efficient design and construction, will allow IBM to reduce its overall carbon footprint compared to standard data centers. Today's opening comes one year after IBM launched Project Big Green, committing $1 billion per year to deliver technologies that help customers increase the level of energy efficiency in their data centers. Since then, IBM has engaged with more than 2,000 clients as part of the project, delivering a variety of hardware, software and services technologies to help businesses reduce data center energy consumption and cut energy costs by more than 40 percent by certain measures.

IBM and Umeå University Announce Energy Efficient Supercomputer for Research

IBM and Umeå University announced today that the most powerful Windows-based computer in Europe is being installed at the supercomputer center known as HPC2N. Scientists at HPC2N will use the powerful system – running on a beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008® – for basic as well as applied research. The computer – nicknamed “Akka” – combines IBM Power® microprocesors and Cell Broadband Engines® with new energy-efficient Xeon® quad-core processors from Intel. Akka will be capable of sustained performance of 46 trillion calculations per second (46 teraflops) and a peak output of 54 teraflops. It would rank among the 50 fastest supercomputers in the world according to the current list of the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites (www.top500.org). It is about 3,000 times more powerful than a laptop computer.

June 16, 2008

IBM Announces IT Carbon Strategy Assessment Service

IBM , today announced a new service, the IT Carbon Strategy Study, to help clients starting on their green transformation identify the most rapid areas of reduction in IT carbon emission across the infrastructure. Part of IBM's Project Big Green initiative, the service enables clients to develop the guiding principles for becoming a greener enterprise and create recommendations for the actions they can take to achieve those goals. The service assesses the entire IT enterprise, not just the data center. The assessment includes both the data center and the distributed environment including offices, retail stores, and warehouses. While early momentum has been in the greening of data centers, studies are revealing that there is at least as much emission reduction potential in the distributed environment. As few companies have existing infrastructure that has been built with energy efficiency as part of the design criteria, the IT Carbon Strategy Study provides clients specific recommendations on project priorities with the biggest potential gains. Projects could comprise the network, printers, distributed servers (server closets outside the data center), facilities upgrades like heating, venting, and air conditioning (HVAC) and universal power supplies (UPS), desktop computers and monitors.

May 19, 2008

IBM Outlines Software for a Greener World

At a gathering of international customers at its Pulse 2008 conference here, IBM today introduced a comprehensive strategy and a broad set of new capabilities to help businesses achieve their green goals. Built around existing and new IBM software and services, as well as support from leading providers of technologies to manage facilities, including heating, cooling and electrical monitoring devices, the strategy is designed to help clients adopt software capabilities that helps organizations optimize and improve their energy efficiency. In May 2007, IBM launched Project Big Green, committing $1 billion per year to deliver technologies that help customers increase the level of energy efficiency in their data centers. Since then, IBM has delivered a variety of hardware, software and services technologies to help customers go green and reap the benefits of increased efficiencies for their businesses while helping to reduce carbon emissions and benefit the environment. These include server-based technologies spanning blade, mainframe and Intel based systems, as well as services that help customers monitor their energy consumption and improve their infrastructure to deliver on green.

April 30, 2008

IBM Arms Clients to Measure Green IT Progress

IBM today announced new energy-management software, an expansion of its energy certificates program, and an energy benchmark to help clients establish energy efficiency goals, optimize for energy efficiency and measure and verify their green IT progress across the enterprise. The new offerings for energy measurement include: IBM Active Energy Manager software to measure power usage of key elements of the datacenter, from IT systems to chilling and air conditioning units; an expansion of IBM's Energy Certificates program to 34 countries; and an online energy assessment benchmark.

April 08, 2008

IBM Turns on the Water for Energy-Efficient Supercomputer

The new Power 575® supercomputer, equipped with IBM’s latest POWER6® microprocessor, uses water-chilled copper plates located above each microprocessor to remove heat from the electronics. Requiring 80 percent fewer air conditioning units, the water-cooled Power 575 can reduce typical energy consumption used to cool the data center by 40 percent.* IBM scientists estimate that water can be up to 4,000-times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.

With 448 processor cores per rack, the new Power 575 offers more than five times the performance of its predecessor, and thanks to advanced water cooling and POWER6 efficiencies, is three times more energy efficient per rack.Nicknamed “Hydro-Cluster” the system supports very large clusters – hundreds of nodes -- and enables extreme performance in dense packaging. A single rack features 14 2U nodes, each with 32, 4.7-Ghz cores of POWER6, a stunning 3.5 TB of memory,and yet is more energy efficient than traditional air-cooled designs. At 600 GFlops per node, the Power 575 is three times more energy-efficient in GFlops per kilowatt than the POWER5® generation of air-cooled processors.