Bovis
How is IBM addressing issues relating to heat-versus-power management in its server platforms?
Latchford
Power consumption in a server is the sum of the power drawn by all individual components: system memory, storage and central processing unit—with this last module consuming the highest percentage of total power and producing the most heat through dissipation.
IBM has always considered a holistic view of server characteristics: when analysing power management, a balanced server design provides the best compromise between processing power, power consumption and heat dissipation. This right balance can only be achieved through the user of the best individual
components and the most advanced server design.
IBM’s engineers have used the same experienced gained from decades of designing cooling for our mainframes, and they have implemented those powerful technologies in IBM’s other server lines, xSeries,
pSeries, iSeries and BladeCenter. We have developed key cooling technologies such as Calibrated Vectored Cooling and recently introduced a new, very low-power blade server that draws an incredibly low 31- watts-per-CPU, enabling more servers per rack for heat/power constrained clients.
Latchford
How does HP intend to harness the vertical industry knowledge that is so strong throughout the IT sales channel?
Bovis
With more than 3000 channel partners across the country HP has Australia’s largest channel partner community of any vendor in a market where many competitors rely heavily on a direct sales and proprietary-solution methods.
HP’s partners span every vertical industry known in Australia and together with their expertise, through partnering with Australia’s industry leading ISVs (independent software vendors) and together with our leading infrastructure solutions we can meet and exceed the needs of customers ranging from an office of one employee to an offi ce of 99 staff and beyond.
HP has further enhanced the capability of our channel partners with our first-to-market program to fund dedicated pre-sales engineers on an on-going basis to work within our channel-partner community. They are chartered to understand scope, design and deliver solutions to meet the needs of their customers.
“Any challenge, if handled right, stops being a challenge and turns into a competitive advantage for any business.”
Bovis
Many IT vendors are guilty of over simplifying server solutions, especially for medium businesses—how does IBM respond to such accusations?
Latchford
IT vendors that exhibit this type of behaviour are typically interested in getting a foot in the door, and while this type of behaviour might result in a short-term sale it does not produce the type of long-term partnership IBM seeks to establish with our clients.
Companies today are faced with the increasing need to integrate business processes, data, applications and people to grow their business in order to stay competitive while meeting the changing demand of the marketplace. We understand that to achieve these possibilities the infrastructure must evolve.
We’ve been at the forefront of this evolution for years, driving characteristics like virtualisation and open standards into our IBM server and storage offerings. Not only are our servers and storage fast and affordable, they are packed with features and functions that can be found in the most sophisticated systems from IBM.
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