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Following on the success of its Power-based systems such as its Watson computer, IBM has announced the opening of its new Power Systems Development Laboratory in Taipei City, Taiwan.
The move also follows by a year IBM’s announcement in April 2010 of a $30 million manufacturing facility in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to produce the next generation of high-end systems, including Power7 — the system at the heart of the “Jeopardy!”-winning Watson.
“IBM is building capability for emerging opportunity not only within our fast-growing Growth Markets Unit, but for clients globally,” said Tom Rosamilia, general manager, IBM Power systems and System z, in a statement. “The new Powedevelopment laboratory will magnify IBM’s leadership systems expertise as we continue to take share across the board.”
According to IDC, IBM’s Power systems had 53.9 percent share of the worldwide UNIX server market (by revenue) in Q4 2010, as IBM gained 5.9 points of share over competitors and led the second-place vendor in the quarter by more than 30 percent. Nearly 400 customers migrated from competitive systems to IBM Power Systems in the fourth quarter, including 235 from Oracle/Sun and 135 from HP, IBM said. And there were nearly 1,200 competitive displacements to IBM Power Systems from Oracle/Sun, HP and others throughout 2010, IBM officials claimed.
Moreover, IBM’s sustained, multibillion dollar investments in Power Systems led to the introduction in 2010 of workload-optimized systems for the demands of emerging business models such as smart electrical grids, real-time analytics in financial markets and health care, mobile telecommunications, and smarter traffic systems.
At a March 24 event in Taipei City, representatives from the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs joined IBM clients and business partners from around the world to open the new laboratory. The new laboratory expands the mission of the Taiwan Systems and Technology Laboratory (TSTL) which is part of IBM’s Greater China STG Development Lab, already a hub for global expertise in storage and other systems architectures. Janice Wang has been named as the director of global Power System development at the laboratory. Wang and her team have global responsibility for Power System development, adding to existing lab expertise in Austin, Texas, Rochester, Minnesota, and Boblingen, Germany.