Optimize Workloads with IBM Solutions and Services

One size doesn't fit allFor many organizations today, that lesson would be well applied in the data center. Data center workloads are often fulfilled via standard system types—blades, for instance—on this faulty premise: workloads are fundamentally similar, and they can therefore be fulfilled using fundamentally similar technology.

Adding more services or applications? Scaling up performance to meet unpredictable demand levels? The old-school response to both questions has often been simply this: “Add more blades, and let the workloads take care of themselves.”

The business reality today, however, demands quite a different response. We live in a time of rapid change; IT must change in parallel. Business workloads in almost all enterprise-class organizations have become more diverse, more complex, and more dynamic. Fulfilling them optimally requires a new approach—one that acknowledges the growing need for an improved business outcome from the IT infrastructure, and that moves beyond the standard response of rolling out more hardware.

Rather than simply deploy standard platforms on the assumption that they can be mapped to any given workload, IBM believes that organizations should consider shifting the focus to the workloads themselves. That is, organizations should analyze what a given workload requires now, and is likely to require in the future, to meet business targets. They should then ask themselves how best those workloads can be fulfilled, via infrastructural deployment and integration, to improve service levels, reduce costs and mitigate business risks.

Failing to do so is very likely to result in a suboptimal return on investment from the IT infrastructure. In today's difficult business climate, that can easily translate into the difference between success and failure.

Optimizing different workloads requires different solutionsTo illustrate this point, consider the following four business workload classes, all four of which are in common use by businesses today. Each class of workload is fundamentally distinct from the others in terms of its resource requirements and the systems best used to fulfill it.

Transaction processing and databases. Databases are continually leveraged by the enterprise to fulfill an ever-growing number of business tasks and transaction types. Imagine an online reseller, for instance, which relies on database-driven transaction processing to carry out the various stages in a sale: performing customer-driven searches, updating inventory, accessing stored customer credit card information, generating invoices, and myriad other tasks. Workloads of this type will typically require highly scalable, secure, and resilient architectures, to ensure that unpredictable spikes in demand (example: the holiday season) will be

addressed, that sensitive data will be securely protected, and that the customer experience will be optimized.

Business applications. Enterprise-class organizations increasingly rely on complex applications such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and software development to fulfill core business functions such as optimizing supply chains, tracking and quantifying emerging areas of customer demand, and developing innovative new services which align to that demand. Such workloads will require both extraordinary amounts of available memory and extraordinary responsiveness if they are to deliver best business value.

Analytics and high performance computing. Databases are raw information; analytics and datamining can transform that information into actionable business intelligence by unveiling hidden trends, isolating unseen problems, making accurate predictions, quantifying the success or failure of business strategies, and suggesting new ones. Exceptionally high processing power will certainly be required for such workloads, as well as high I/O bandwidth (to move large amounts of data rapidly from point A to point B in the infrastructure).

Web, collaboration, and infrastructure. Here, the goal is to empower information-sharing and task-sharing among an unpredictable number of users (as in the case of a Web 2.0 site), and to an unpredictable extent (as in the specific applications that might be in use at any given time on that site, each of which has its own infrastructural requirements). Increasingly, organizations are also creating such platforms internally, to drive collaboration among team members generally and to increase the productivity and contribution of team members who are geographically remote. And, of course, traditional functions in the enterprise such as e-mail and file hosting also fall under this rubric. In all contexts, workloads will require exceptional scalability and data processing capabilities,

How should organizations ideally fulfill the requirements of such fundamentally different workload types? As we have seen, no two of these workloads are characterized by identical challenges; no two, similarly, demand identical resources. It stands to reason that no two can be best fulfilled using identical platforms. And the organization that ignores the varying nature and details of these workloads, instead simply deploying more blades in a generic fashion, is not likely to get the best business outcome.

Work with IBM to develop a workload-optimized, dynamic infrastructure IBM offers a compelling alternative: the concept of the dynamic infrastructure. This is best understood as a flexible, scalable infrastructure capable of assigning infrastructural resources dynamically, in accordance with changing business requirements, via the convergence of IT and business management. It benefits from IBM's deep and proven expertise in assisting organizations of all kinds as they strive to optimize their workloads, and it can also be tailored to match any organization's unique context and requirements.

Naturally, no two organizations have the same goals, resources, challenges or workloads.

No two organizations, similarly, will implement a dynamic infrastructure in the same manner. Fortunately, IBM offers a complete range of hardware, software and services from which a custom solution can be developed—a tailored, workload-optimized dynamic infrastructure capable of generating truly superior business value.

Among other elements available to clients for this purpose:

A broad range of hardware choices. IBM offers a complete array of systems, from System x blades to POWER-driven minicomputers to high-end System z mainframes. Each offers different strengths, and each maps well to different workload classes and business needs. IBM can work with clients to ensure that their needs are met through the optimal combination of systems.

Pre-integrated systems. These systems represent an even more extensive level of tailoring; they are purpose-built specifically for different workload classes, and boast tuned software stacks designed to drive the highest levels of performance given the specific contexts of those workloads.

Integrated workloads. Fulfilling today's complex workloads will often require more than dedicated systems working alone; it will require heterogeneous systems to work in concert. IBM can work with your organization to seamlessly integrate those heterogeneous systems, thus driving up resiliency and overall scalability while driving down management complexity.

Best-in-class business software. IBM offers far more than just hardware. Also available to IBM clients are the Tivoli system/service management portfolio, the Rational software development portfolio, and the WebSphere application server portfolio, each of which boasts dedicated solutions capable of helping to optimize workloads in different ways.

A full range of services. At every stage in the workload optimization process, from assessment to planning to implementation to management, IBM experts are available to consult with your organization to help create the dynamic infrastructure that best meets organizational needs.

Furthermore, workload optimization is a core element of every aspect and phase of the dynamic infrastructure migration. The IBM process of developing a dynamic infrastructure, in fact, begins not with technology per se, but with organizational workloads. Their attributes—and the goals and requirements associated with them—drive system requirements, which inform and determine optimal system design, which is then optimized still further to ensure workload fulfillment.

In this way, IBM keeps the focus where it belongs: on business goals and the many ways technology can help fulfill them, both efficiently and cost-efficiently, both today and tomorrow.

Additional Information

Flexible sourcing options:http://www-07.ibm.com/systems/nz/dynamicinfrastructure/flexible_sourcing/

Web-based sizing tool for estimating workloads:http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/tools/estimator/

Bullets:

• Different workloads have different characteristics and requirements• Getting best results from different workloads will often require targeted solutions• IBM offers a complete range of solutions that can be tuned to optimize workloads• IBM's Dynamic Infrastructure initiative includes workload optimization as a key element

Talking points: See above

Tweet tagline: When IT fulfills workloads optimally, the result is an improved business outcome. IBM offers a complete, modular range of hardware, software and services!

Abstract: Today's complex workloads require more than just increased system deployment. They need a tailored infrastructure capable of optimizing them. Fortunately, IBM offers a complete, modular portfolio of hardware, software and services through which any organization can optimize its workloads and develop a more dynamic infrastructure.

Tags/keywords: workloads, optimize, optimization, systems, infrastructure, dynamic