IBM Power Systems Again Trump Latest Intel Offering, Highlights Total Systems Value

ARMONK, N.Y., July 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced its latest SAP performance result on a POWER6-based server, along with details of a new study that demonstrates how IBM Power Systems -- with virtualization technology, reliability, availability and energy efficiency features -- can help clients save up to 33 percent on operating costs in an SAP(R) solution-based environment.

The IBM POWER6-based Power 550 server recently achieved an industry leading 8-core result (4 processors / 8 cores (4 dual-core processor chips) / 16 threads) on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, using the SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode). (1) The results of the SAP benchmark showed that the Power 550 can handle 3,752 users, eclipsing both the 8-core and the users-per-core results of all other vendors, including HP, Sun, Fujitsu and Hitachi (1), all using Intel's chips.

The IBM result showcases the performance of SAP applications and DB2 V 9.5 database software running on the AIX 6.1 operating system in a Power 550 two-tier environment.

This marks the latest in a series of benchmarks -- including ERP, online transaction processing, commercial computational throughput and scientific computational throughput -- that demonstrate that POWER6 delivers the most performance per core of any server. Power Systems continue to provide leadership results across the most recognized benchmarks in the industry. Overall, IBM Power Systems with POWER6 technology have recorded more than 70 industry-leading performance benchmarks. (2)

The benchmark results demonstrated that IBM's POWER6, the world's fastest chip, remains the microprocessor standard, besting all competition -- including Nehalem, Intel's latest chip.IBM Shines in ITG Study

According to an International Technology Group (ITG) report , three-year costs for use of Power servers ranged from 25-33 percent less than those built around commodity x86 servers in an SAP solution-based environment. (3)

Conversely, the three-year cost for the use of x86 servers was 48 percent higher than for Power servers in the retail industry, 49 percent higher in manufacturing, and 33 percent higher in energy.

Costs outlined in the report include hardware acquisition and maintenance, systems software licenses and support, including operating systems and virtualization tools, personnel and facilities, primarily energy.

"The outstanding SAP benchmark result and the ITG study demonstrate two more ways that IBM beats the competition hands down," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing, strategy and sales support, IBM Power Systems. "Today we are reasserting Power Systems and our performance prowess in the SAP space, and at the same time showing an end-to-end solution with a total cost of ownership package that is the ideal fit for today's data center. IBM Power Systems with PowerVM virtualization and Systems Director advanced management offer the perfect alternative for Sun and HP UNIX clients currently on Solaris or HP/UX who are not only facing unplanned chip delays or cancellations but also may be left without a long term SPARC or Intel Itanium processor roadmap."Balanced System Design, Software Stack

First announced more than two years ago, IBM POWER6 processor-based systems continue to provide leadership performance for customers. Balanced system design and the Power Systems software stack, including robust PowerVM software, offer companies flexibility and a dynamic response to changing business environments.

Power Systems virtualization, with capabilities like micro-partitioning and recently added active memory sharing, delivers higher utilization in the data center, reducing client costs in energy, space, maintenance and software licenses. In addition, unique IBM RAS features such as Live Partition Mobility, which helps businesses move workloads without downtime, reduces costs while improving business resilience. And IBM's Active Energy Manager software provides functions such as monitoring, analysis and allocation of energy usage at the rack or server level.

IBM Customers Reap Benefits

Vishay is one of the world's largest manufacturers of discrete semiconductors and passive electronic components whose products are used in virtually all types of electronic devices industries such as aerospace, automotive, medical and telecommunications. The company recently implemented Power servers as a standardized platform for its SAP environment, using both server and storage virtualization."The global consolidation to IBM Power Systems means that we are able to share central resources across the company," said Seth Slivka, senior vice president of global IT, Vishay Intertechnology Inc. "While Europe sleeps, engineers in the US can tackle maintenance tasks on systems they know and understand. The consolidated approach -- which offers lower training requirements and shared knowledge that can be used across all our operations -- has helped us reduce costs by 10 percent annually."

Murray Goulburn Co-Operative Company Limited, based in Melbourne, Australia, is that country's largest manufacturer of dairy products. Murray Goulburn migrated from seven Sun servers to a single IBM Power Systems server, taking advantage of virtualization capabilities to solve processing performance issues and positioning the company to take advantage of the latest SAP applications.

"IBM Power Systems servers offer scalability, expandability and the potential to vary our costs to some extent in peak times with the ability to call processors on or turn them off," said Paul Stancill, IT manager at Murray Goulburn.

Power Systems hardware, software and services -- along with aggressive sales and marketing activities that have attracted hundreds of Sun and HP UNIX clients to IBM Power every year -- have helped IBM increase its number one leadership position in the UNIX market. According to the most recent International Data Corporation (IDC) worldwide quarterly server tracker, IBM is the only major UNIX vendor to gain revenue share in the past five years while both Sun and HP lost share. (4)
About IBM Power Systems
For more information on IBM Power Systems visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/.

IBM is a trademark of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through The Open Group. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvald.Footnotes

(1) Results for the IBM Power 550 on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark (certification number 2009023): 3,752 SAP SD Benchmark users, .97 seconds average dialog response time, 410,330 fully processed order line items per hour, 1,231,000 dialog steps per hour, 20,520 SAPS, 0.013 seconds / 0.016 seconds average database request time (dialog/update), 99 percent CPU utilization of central server. The IBM System 550 was configured as follows: 4 processors / 8 cores / 16 threads, POWER6 5.0 GHz, 128 KB L1 cache and 4 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB L3 cache per processor, 64 GB main memory running AIX 6.1, DB2 9.5 and SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode).

Fujitsu PRIMERGY Model TX300 S5 / RX300S5 on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark (certification number 2009014): 3,328 SAP SD Benchmark users, .99 seconds average dialog response time, 363.330 fully processed order line items per hour, 1,090,000 dialog steps per hour, 18.170 SAPS, 0.025 seconds / 0.014 seconds average database request time (dialog/update), 99 percent CPU utilization of central server. The system was configured as follows: 2 processors / 8 cores / 16 threads, Intel Xeon Processor X5570, 2.93 GHz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 8 MB L3 cache per processor, 48 GB main memory, running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2008 and SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode).

HP ProLiant DL380 G6 on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark (certification number 2009005): 3,300 SAP SD Benchmark users, .98 seconds average dialog response time, 360,670 fully processed order line items per hour, 1,082,000 dialog steps per hour, 18.030 SAPS, 0.039 seconds / 0.016 seconds average database request time (dialog/update), 98 percent CPU utilization of central server. The system was configured as follows: 2 processors / 8 cores / 16 threads, Intel Xeon Processor X5570, 2.93 GHz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 8 MB L3 cache per processor, 48 GB main memory, running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2008 and SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode).

Hitachi BladeSymphony BS2000 Model E55A1 on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark (certification number 20090013): 2,964 SAP SD Benchmark users, .98 seconds average dialog response time, 324,000 fully processed order line items per hour, 972,000 dialog steps per hour, 16,200 SAPS, 0.037 seconds / 0.021 seconds average database request time (dialog/update), 99 percent CPU utilization of central server. The system was configured as follows: 2 processors / 8 cores / 16 threads, Intel Xeon Processor X5570, 2.93 GHz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 8 MB L3 cache per processor, 48 GB main memory, running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2008 and SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode).Sun Fire X4270 on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark (certification number 2009005): 3,700 SAP SD Benchmark users, .94 seconds average dialog response time, 406.000 fully processed order line items per hour, 1,218,000 dialog steps per hour, 20,300 SAPS, 0.017 seconds / 0.015 seconds average database request time (dialog/update), 99 percent CPU utilization of central server. The system was configured as follows: 2 processors / 8 cores / 16 threads, Intel Xeon Processor X5570, 2.93 GHz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 8 MB L3 cache per processor, 48 GB main memory, running Solaris 10, Oracle 10g and SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode).
  Results current as of 6/29/09.  Source: http://www.sap.com/benchmark
  (2) http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/benchmarks
(3) Value Proposition for IBM Power Systems: Platform Choice for the Enterprise SAP Infrastructure, by International Technology Group. Link: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/sa/wh/n/pol03021usen/POL03021USEN.PDF
  (4) IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, May 2009