IBM Corp.Wednesday announced it would make the second offering from its Project Symphony product family generally available by the end of October. The latest bundled product will help IBM customers more quickly deploy Web infrastructure on their nets, Big Blue says.
IBM Web Infrastructure Orchestration is based on the eServer BladeCenter, which includes seven blade servers, and comes pre-integrated with versions of IBM’s WebSphere application platform, DB2 database, Tivoli Storage Manager and TotalStorage hardware. The components of the bundle will be configured and managed, based on defined business policies, by Tivoli Intelligent ThinkDynamic Orchestrator.
IBM last month introduced the Tivoli orchestration software, based on technology IBM acquired with ThinkDynamics earlier this year. IBM says the software automatically adds and removes servers for applications, depending on how heavily they are being used. IBM used the US Open as its showcase for Project Symphony and the new Tivoli software, demonstrating how it can “sense and respond” to specific infrastructure conditions and automatically allocate capacity, roll out an application or alert IT managers when thresholds aren’t met.
This second offering from Project Symphony, an IBM code name for a family of products and services that IBM’s systems, software, and Global Services groups plan to offer as a way to more effectively use data centre resources, is said to reduce the time it takes companies to deploy applications or add capacity to their Web infrastructure.
“This will allow IBM customers to quickly go in and get a return on investment and show, with an incremental product upgrade, how IT can help support business goals,” said Sandy Carter, a vice-president of marketing with IBM.
The bundle comes with hardware, services and software. IBM added packaged intelligence by way of pre-defined policies and workflow information, Carter says. And the Tivoli software is extensible, allowing customers to configure and add their own business processes and workflow when they deploy the package on their nets.
Pricing for the Tivoli Intelligent ThinkDynamic Orchestrator software starts at US$20,000 and can scale to US$300,000 for the bundled hardware, software and services, depending on configuration. IBM Web Infrastructure Orchestration is expected to be generally available by Oct. 31.
