| IBM's facility in Rochester, Minn., has a rich heritage
of business computing innovation and client satisfaction
-- a tradition that continues today. With a focus on servers
and services, the site plays a key role in the company's
on demand business strategy.
IBM began operations in Rochester in 1956 with 174
employees working in a 50,000-square foot leased facility.
The current site was first occupied in 1958. Three years
later, the company expanded its Rochester operations
to include a development laboratory. Since the development
lab was established, Rochester inventors have been awarded
more than 2,700 U.S. patents for product innovation.
Today, IBM occupies about 3.6 million square feet
of owned and leased space in Rochester (equivalent to
about 78 football fields). It remains the largest IBM
facility in the world under one contiguous roof.
IBM Rochester received the Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award in 1990, and was recognized as a MNSTAR
(Minnesota Star) work site in 2002 for developing safety
systems that go beyond basic compliance of OSHA standards.
The site is also ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 certified.
About 4,400 regular employees representing more than
30 IBM organizations now work together in Rochester
to provide innovative business solutions to clients
around the world. Although the site has a wide diversity
of skills, its predominant mission is the development,
manufacture and support of IBM eServer business computers.
IBM Rochester employees play a vital role in the development
and manufacture of IBM eServer iSeries and pSeries systems.
IBM eServer iSeries is the company's integrated business
server for small-to-mid-sized enterprises; pSeries is
IBM's powerful and technologically advanced line of
UNIX servers.
Site employees are also involved in software development
for many IBM products. The Blue Gene/L supercomputer,
which claimed the No. 1 spot on the latest Top500 list
-- a highly-respected ranking of the world's most powerful
supercomputers -- is developed and manufactured in Rochester.
When completed, Blue Gene/L will consist of 64 full
racks and achieve a peak performance of 360 teraflops.
Artist's rendition of what the final Blue Gene/L
machine will look like installed at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory.
IBM Engineering & Technology Services, a business
formed in late 2002, brings together IBM's know-how
and capabilities in information technology services
and advanced technology, offering customers a wealth
of engineering talent with the ability to leverage IBM's
vast intellectual property, including designs ranging
from complex chips to entire systems.
IBM Global Services (IGS) employees provide information
technology services for the Rochester facility, as well
as commercial customers, spanning development, manufacturing,
marketing and administrative support. IGS also provides
application development and maintenance, and software
testing services for IBM clients and the IBM Corporation.
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