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IBM recently announced enhancements to its IBM PureSystems family of expert integrated systems that improve disaster recovery capabilities.
New features enable enterprises that are accelerating cloud deployments using IBM PureApplication System to get disaster recovery services up and running in four clicks. IBM announced these enhancements at its IBM Impact 2013 conference in Las Vegas.
Other enhancements include increased security capabilities with advanced encryption options, greater system scalability and reduced application response times during unplanned spikes in demand, and new support for Windows applications.
These enhancements are being announced as IBM marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of its IBM PureSystems family of solutions. To date, more than 4,000 PureSystems have been sold in more than 90 countries and across dozens of industries. PureSystems clients and partners include Altus, IT, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company, the city of Bunbury in Australia, Desert Research Institute (DRI), DynaFront, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Proginov and XO Communications.
IBM PureSystems offer an alternative to other enterprise computing models by combining server, storage, networking and platform middleware resources into a secure, simple-to-deploy and manage system. The PureSystems family of solutions includes IBM PureFlex System, IBM PureApplication System and IBM PureData System.
Disaster recovery solutions are critical to avoiding service disruption during unplanned events, such as a natural disaster or IT outage. However, when setting up standalone disaster recovery solutions to protect data in the cloud, organizations can face costly and complex hurdles.
With disaster recovery as part of the integrated system, enterprises using PureApplication System to run their cloud environments can now eliminate many of the manual steps required to set up and manage multiple point solutions.
For example, PureApplication System transforms the configuration for replication and failover, with near-zero data loss, from days to a four-click process on each of two systems—the backup and the primary. ISPs and managed service providers (MSPs) can leverage this capability to deliver to their customers more resilient applications and application platform solutions based on the PureApplication System.
“Disaster recovery is a critical piece of application lifecycle management,” said He Guoping, chief technology officer at eWell Technology. “The ability to get these services up and running quickly across a cloud environment means we can offer this service to our customers efficiently and in compliance with related service-level agreements.”
Meanwhile, additional enhancements to the PureApplication System offer expanded software application support, greater security options and more system performance elasticity, IBM said. Specific capabilities of the PureApplication System platform include broad software application support, simplified encryption for the cloud and flexible system responses to usage spikes. The PureApplication System now features support for a broader range of software applications, including Windows and Linux, said Marie Wieck, general manager of WebSphere at IBM. Supporting multi-tiered applications than can run on the PureApplication System is particularly important for those using the system to provide a migration path to cloud environments.
In addition, new security features include enhanced encryption capabilities. IBM is offering application-specific blueprints that automate software installation and ongoing management to enable users to set and enforce encryption policies to protect apps running on the system. New security patterns include the availability of FIPS 140-2 certified encryption.
Moreover, the PureApplication System provides greater performance elasticity and improves the ability for applications to respond to spikes in demand to seconds while enabling users to provision fewer resources up-front, cutting operations costs.
“IBM PureSystems is the ideal choice because it helps us to grow our business with higher flexibility and better time-to-market, at the same level of support staff,” Christophe Bonnard, Sogeti France CEO, said in a statement. “Time-to-market for us is time to market for our customers.”
IBM continues to expand the built-in expertise of its patterns, and new capabilities to improve scalability and security of applications running on PureApplication Systems are examples of that ongoing commitment.
Through its PureSystems Centre, IBM works with more than 275 ISVs to offer more than 375 software patterns across 21 industries that are verified “Ready for PureSystems.”
In addition to third-party ISV patterns, IBM CastIron, IBM API Management and IBM Datapower Gateway XG45 and XI52 appliances now support PureApplication System as well as new enhanced patterns for the WebSphere Commerce platform, IBM Maximo Asset Management, IBM Mobile Application Platform, IBM Business Intelligence, IBM Business Process Management and IBM Operational Decision Management.