Application performance improvement

Step up your application performance You can improve application performance and get the flexibility to accommodate growth and manage greater workloads with fewer servers.

Increase application performance and responsiveness with dynamic infrastructure

Your application and database workload demands are exploding. Your IT budget is shrinking. Meanwhile, your infrastructure is not up to the task of running the latest applications. IBM has a plan for IT managers facing these challenges with unique solutions that are optimised for the workloads that drive your business. IBM systems have advanced capabilities to help companies increase application and database workload support and performance while actually using fewer servers and greatly reducing costs.

Enhance application performance with IBM Systems

Optimise your system to manage growth and improve service

IBM can help clients identify improvements and create a vision for the right infrastructure for their mission critical applications.

Unlike other vendors, IBM can provide hardware solutions that are optimised to meet your specific application and database workload needs – not "one size fits all" offerings. For example, IBM PowerVM technology provides dynamic resource allocation allowing fast and nimble response to business challenges.

It's no accident that IBM servers and storage are so well optimised for the latest application releases: we work closely with ISVs on an ongoing basis. Thousands of IBM professionals collaborate in joint ISV competency centres and development labs with our counterparts from SAP and Oracle to develop optimised systems so you can manage your growth far into the future.

Learn more. Download a copy of the IBM Manage Growth e-kit (US)
Do more with less
If it takes you days — or weeks — to accommodate demand, it's time to take action. Flexible, responsive IBM Systems have the headroom to accommodate more demand more quickly. We're talking minutes and hours, not days. That's because IBM Systems are designed to let you "scale right," according to your demand, with minimal expense and disruption. IBM System x 3950 M2 is the industry's only x86 server that lets you "pay as you grow" by scaling from four cores to 64.

IBM Power Systems have the best performance for 8, 16, and 64 core database servers. You can do more with less with the 5.0 GHz 16-core Power 570:
- Three times the memory, over seven times the memory bandwidth, and more than two times the I/O bandwidth of HP.
- Four times the memory, over 5 times the memory bandwidth, and over four times the I/O bandwidth of Sun.
Learn more. Download a copy of the IBM Do More with Less e-kit (US)
Manage business risk
You're responsible for keeping the business up and running — and there's no longer any acceptable level of downtime for your applications. IBM knows the territory well:
- When you can't afford to have a server go down, mainframe-inspired RAS and 100% greater flexibility deliver the investment protection you need. IBM's total solution capabilities provide the confidence to know the solution you're deploying is reliable, efficient, scalable and will help you reduce costs while still maintaining – even growing – your business in an uncertain economy.
- Power Systems virtualisation technologies may help to reduce your cost of downtime by up to 59% versus a conventional UNIX environment.
- Live Partition Mobility lets Power servers move live logical partitions — including the entire operating system and all its running applications — from one server to another all while the applications are running. This avoids a scheduled outage and a potential unscheduled one. You can also dynamically consolidate workloads, including applications, onto fewer servers during off-peak times, turning off unutilised computers and saving energy.
- With Live Application Mobility you can move applications across partitions within a Power server with minimal disruption to service. This helps increase application availability and performance through workload balancing, improved utilisation and easier planning for systems maintenance.
Get peace of mind knowing you've made the decision to migrate with a trusted partner who has helped over 5000 customers make the successful change to an IBM System, over the past four years.

Learn More. Download a copy of the IBM Reduce Risk e-kit (US)
Why IBM for SAP
For over 30 years, IBM and SAP have seen thousands of customers through successful implementations. Our ongoing relationship extends beyond mere compatibility.

IBM System x enterprise servers are optimised for database processing, enterprise applications, and consolidated virtual-server environments. Faster servers mean that fewer are required to handle the same workloads, translating into lower software licensing and support costs.

The 64-core IBM Power 595 delivers 35,400 concurrent SAP users. It's also twice the number of SAP users per core of Sun or HP. So you'll be able to scale with precision, according to your demand.

Klinikum Chemnits upgraded their SAP ERP applications by replacing eight HP servers with two Power 570 servers and IBM PowerVM, reducing investment costs by 20 percent and operating costs by 10 percent with a shared infrastructure. Data storage was moved from an isolated RAID storage system to a SAN based on IBM System Storage DS4000 disk systems.
- Klinikum Chemnits cuts SAP infrastructure investment costs by 20 percent (US)
Applications need fast, secure and dependable access to information if they're going to meet the demanding service and compliance requirements of your business. IBM Systems Storage gives you the choice of innovative technologies to build an information infrastructure that scales to your needs. For example, the IBM XIV Storage System has a virtualised, grid-based architecture which enables self-tuning and self-healing as well as amazing management simplicity and low total costs.

Case study
White papers
Why IBM for Oracle

Did you know that today’s increasing database workloads have forced many IT managers to add servers simply to keep up. But additional servers mean more software licenses, more systems to manage and higher costs. That’s a real challenge especially as IT budgets continue to shrink. IBM Systems offer leading performance and the highest scalability. So you can handle your Oracle DB workloads with fewer servers, helping to lower your licensing costs.

IBM System x offers speed and flexibility, making it the ideal platform for Oracle workloads. The IBM x3850 M2 with the Intel® Xeon™ 6 core 7470 processor architecture sets the top result for Oracle E-Business R12 payroll batch processing running on Oracle Database 10g R2 and RHEL 4. This new technology combination can drive a payroll update for 10,000 employees in only 5.37 minutes, which equates to 111,732 employee payroll updates per hour.¹

When you consolidate your database workloads onto an IBM BladeCenter infrastructure, you will see immediate results — including savings of up to 93% on energy costs and a complete ROI in as few as three months. Plus, you can reduce your IT footprint by up to 95% and achieve an 11:1 server consolidation ratio — all with equal or better database performance.²

IBM Power Systems with advanced virtualisation capabilities can reduce the number of servers needed to run your Oracle database workloads, thereby lowering your TCO. In fact, you will need as little as 1/3 the number of processors to handle your current database workloads. IBM Power Systems 570 8 core also features the industry’s #1 performance across the leading database applications (Oracle on UNIX).³
Why IBM for SQL

IBM System x Enterprise servers scale from 4 socket to 16 socket. When deployed with Microsoft SQL Server, which scales correspondingly, the result is best-in-class overall scalability for the most demanding database workloads.

Whether you have an existing data warehouse or business intelligence infrastructure or are just getting started, the IBM Business Intelligence Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers a solution that gets you up and running quickly and with minimal impact on your business. Running on an IBM System x3950 M2 Server and IBM System Storage DS5000 platform with Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the IBM solution delivers application database affordability, improving resource utilisation, ease of management, and ROI.

For SQL environments, IBM System Storage with SnapManager software is designed to lower costs and streamline database storage while simplifying configuration, backup, and restore operations. When deployed in concert with N series storage systems, SnapManager allows administrators to add storage while SQL Servers remain online—increasing uptime and supporting SLAs.
Why IBM for DB2

IBM System x enterprise servers give you exceptional performance for high-end Intel processor-based servers. They’ve outperformed the competition in the x86 TPC-C benchmark by more than 50% running DB2 9.5 on Red Hat Linux 5.2.⁴

DB2 is optimised for the Power architecture, providing a high performance and reliable platform for application database workloads. IBM Power 570 has the #1 database performance across leading database applications (Oracle, DB2 on UNIX or Sybase on Linux), from 2-core through 32-core.⁵

IBM can work within your budget to provide you the systems technology and world-class expertise to set you on the right path for years to come. IBM Global Financing project financing can help with funding services that fit your needs and get you started with your application and data migration. And when you need to dispose of your old equipment, IBM Express Asset Recovery Solutions (ARS) offers a comprehensive range of reasonably priced buyback and disposal services.

Featured article

This article explores how migrating to IBM Servers and Storage can help IT managers build an optimal architecture for critical business applications.

¹ IBM drives 1st Oracle VM based and leading result for JD Edwards running in a Oracle VM (virtualised) environment

x3550 M2 - Set top result on Oracle E-Business Suite Order to Cash Batch medium kit benchmark. 100,000 Orders were processed in just 30 minutes. Note that Dell and Sun have never posted results on this benchmark.

x3550 M2 - Sets top result on Oracle E-Business Suite Employee Payroll Batch Large Kit benchmark. Over 286,000 employees were processed in 1 hour usine the latest in Intel and IBM System x technology.

x3550 M2 - Sets top result on Oracle E-Business Suite Employee Payroll batch Small Kit benchmark. Over 286,000 employees were processed in 1 hour usine the latest in Intel and IBM System x technology. We were able to top HP's previous result by 16%!

² Based on IBM actual, public results on HS22 & Intel internal analysis. 1Urack server configuration: 2S 1C Xeon (3.80GHz 2MB cache) with 8x 1GB memory and 1 HDD – total power: 382W under load, SPECjbb2005 = 50,970 bops. HS22 blade server configuration: 2S 4C Xeon X5570 (2.93GHz 8MB cache) with 6x 2GB memory and 1 HDD – total power with chassis burden = 317W under load, SPECjbb2005 = 604,417 bops. Power cost estimate used is US$0.10 kW-Hr. New hardware cost estimate based on projected US list pricing for the HS22 and chassis infrastructure, including 14 blades, BladeCenter E chassis with redundant power and redundant advanced management module. servmodule. Software license cost for operating system & application estimate used is $1,000 per server. Data centre floor space cost estimate used is $500 per square foot, average 8 square feet per standard enterprise 42Urack. IT footprint compares 1Uper rack server vs. 0.5Uper HS22 blade–14 HS22 blades in 7UBladeCenter E chassis provides equal or greater performance than 137 1Urack servers. ROI calculation solved for power cost savings + license cost savings + floor space cost savings = new hardware acquisition cost. IT footprint assumes standard 42Urack.

³ Source: www.tpc.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

⁴ Source: www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/25129.wss (US)

⁵ Source: www.tpc.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)