System iNetwork

August 5, 2009

Is IBM Still a Hardware Company?

When I first started working in the tech industry back in the mid-nineties, it seems to me that IBM was very much associated with the hardware it produced--the AS/400 and then iSeries, of course, but also its mainframes and burgeoning AIX and Windows boxes. Regardless of the operating system, it seemed as if IBM's strategy was all about solutions centered around the hardware--start at the core and build out from there. Now, though, I think it's safe to say IBM has shed its hardware-centric reputation.

It's obvious, of course, that IBM has been focusing on software and services for quite some time. I'm just saying that it looks to me as if we have entered a phase where IBM has shifted its foundation to expertise and services offerings rather than the hardware and operating systems that support a business need.

Take the recent IBM Smart Market initiative as an example. The program targets small businesses by creating an ecosystem for the purchase, service, and support of appliance-like IBM Smart Cubes that run pre-packaged applications. These units are really cool, and they run IBM i (rock-solid, low-maintenance) and Linux (cheap yet also solid).

But it takes an awful lot of work to drill down to figure out what hardware and OS you're actually buying. The presumption is that SMB-sized buyers don't care about the hardware or OS, just the applications and IBM for the trouble-free service and support.

This strategy doesn't seem to be terribly off-base, but IBM could also promote the rock-solid, no-maintenance reliability of IBM i . . . and at the same time offer a box with a pre-configured Linux partition and say, "No matter what you want or how you grow, we can handle it."

Not Just the SMB World

IBM introduced its Smart Analytics System last week, which it bills as the industry's first comprehensive offering that brings the power of analytics to clients in just a matter of days. IBM says it is "taking advantage of its unique combination of software and hardware technology, industry knowledge, research math sciences and services expertise to help clients make more informed decisions faster than ever before."

While IBM mentions "hardware" in its press release, the company doesn't actually say what this hardware is. Here's a bit more detail:

The Smart Analytics System is a single, fine-tuned system optimized with the right balance of software, systems and storage capabilities for deep analytics computing workloads. It can uncover insights and hidden relationships among massive amounts of data -- not just structured information found in databases, but unstructured and incompatible data from such diverse sources as videos, emails, Web sites, podcasts, blogs, wikis, archival data and more. This makes it well-suited to tackle some of the most complex problems associated with areas targeted for stimulus investments, such as financial risk management, smart grids, electronic medical records and management of healthcare costs, education, identity theft and fraud, and food safety.

The Smart Analytics System can harness the power of analytics to solve complex business problems as much as three times faster than other systems, while requiring up to 50 percent less storage -- saving both floor space and energy. A powerful analytics system that would have required the time of half a dozen or more technical experts to set up can now be deployed by as few as one, or none at all for smaller configurations. For most configurations, the system can be "analytics ready" in as few as 12 days.

And then on the IBM Smart Analytics System web site, IBM explains:

At the core of the IBM Smart Analytics System, you will find powerful warehouse and storage optimization capabilities. This foundation not only manages the data store but is essential for speeding system deployment and enabling advanced analytics.

Each configuration can be augmented at anytime to meet new requirements by simply adding new analytic capability or data and user capacity building block components. Moreover, because all of these components use the same foundation, the system is easy to maintain, preserves existing investments, and delivers results in days rather than months.

So what's the foundation of the Smart Analytics System? It's still hard to say, but I eventually found a link to a .pdf about IBM InfoSphere Warehouse 9.5 that implied that IBM InfoSphere Warehouse 9.5 was the foundation for the new system. Supported operating systems are Unix, Linux, and Windows, by the way. IBM i and z/OS weren't mentioned.

Then again, IBM's mainframes are capable of running thousands of Linux partitions, so why does z/OS even matter? And IBM i? Again, even an organization with a Power System can use the box to run just about anything.

Either way, IBM is selling a system that installs fast, and it seems to be focusing on capabilities, not trifling hardware, software, and OS details.

There's More

Of course, I've noticed lots of other subtle and hard-to-quantify shifts. It seems as if more and more IBM announcements and press releases contain far fewer mentions of the hardware systems that might be involved. If IBM announces a big sale, a new contract, or super new initiative, the hardware isn't mentioned where, in years past, it used to be highlighted, if not simply noted. I'm guessing this shift is in part due to the fractured infrastructure nature of so many companies and contracts these days, but also it seems as if IBM isn't interested in bothering with noting how and where its hardware is used.

When something specific is developed, the company definitely does note the hardware, as evidenced by last week's POWER7 upgrade news. Similarly, when POWER7 does ship, we'll hear a lot about performance.

In the meantime, IBM's focus is on software and services packages. With virtualization changing the way we interact with hardware, not to mention cloud computing, I'm not sure if this is inevitable, a side effect, or a conscious effort to build services and expertise as the new IBM differentiator.

Posted by cmaxcer at August 5, 2009 10:46 AM