IBM Dials Blades for Next-Gen Network Telco Providers, Speeds Network Bandwidth Up to Ten Times Faster to Help Unleash New Voice and Video Application

Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) previewed a powerful new BladeCenter HT system that delivers superior performance and high-speed connectivity for network bandwidth up to 10 times greater than previously possible, to help telecommunications network providers unleash next-generation applications for consumers based on the convergence of voice, data and video networks.

"Our telecommunications technologies and user adoption are advancing rapidly, with more complex IP-based data services such as multimedia and full-HTML web browsing that require more computing power to process than ever before," said Christian Gabetta, senior technical director at Bytemobile, Inc. "The high-speed connectivity and higher network bandwidth of IBM's BladeCenter HT will make this platform an ideal choice for carriers to power their networks and quickly scale out their data centers to meet subscribers growing need for next-generation data services on mobile devices."

IBM is further extending its portfolio of solutions for the telecommunications industry today by previewing BladeCenter HT, a new "hardened" blade server system that meets international telecommunications standards and includes high-performance computing interconnects and switching for demanding next-generation network applications. The new system along with new blades from IBM will help the telco industry deliver next-generation applications for consumers such as high-speed broadband, Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), Voice over IP (VoIP), Video on Demand (VoD) and Advanced Security solutions (e.g. Firewall, Intrusion Prevention).

"IP-based data services such as multimedia messaging, online gaming and IPTV require large quantities of computing power," said Jim Pertzborn, vice president, IBM Telecommunications Industry Servers. "Today's announcement previews an extension to the BladeCenter family which will allow our clients to mix and match a wide variety of BladeCenter processor and operating system platforms to quickly scale and meet their specific networking requirements while maintaining complete interoperability and investment protection with existing BladeCenter systems."

As next-generation networks combine enterprise data applications with new voice and video applications, IBM continues to grow its BladeCenter ecosystem to support this convergence. Industry organization Blade.org has fostered a collaborative community of over 80 members focused on accelerating the development of IBM BladeCenter-based solutions, and IBM's BladeCenter Alliance Program and Open Specification Program has enabled over 700 technology and solution providers to develop products and solutions based on the open specifications for IBM BladeCenter. Additionally, companies such as BroadSoft and Teak Technologies are currently developing new telco industry-specific applications for BladeCenter HT:

BroadSoft creates VoIP application software that lets fixed and mobile service providers offer advanced calling features to their enterprise and residential customers. "BroadSoft has worked closely with IBM to optimize our solutions on the IBM BladeCenter family of products with great success. We are excited about the forthcoming release of BladeCenter HT and expect it will further accelerate the shift we are seeing towards blade servers as our customers transition to IMS and next-generation networks," said Bob Weidenfeller, Vice President of Engineering, BroadSoft.

Teak Technologies is building a new category of switching solutions to simplify data center networks and transform them into a Congestion-Free Zone. "Blade.org provides a compelling point-of-view in the rapidly evolving compute industry. This viewpoint is grounded in the strength of the BladeCenter platform, is reflective of its growing ecosystem, and shows IBM is acutely aware of the importance to serve customer needs across the entire solutions stack. At Teak, we cherish such an environment where collaboration serves as a force multiplier in shaping the future of a nascent industry. We are excited to be building a 10G Congestion-Free Ethernet switching solution on the IBM BladeCenter family platform," said Sanjay Dua, Chief Marketing Officer, Teak Technologies and Blade.org Member.

Products and Availability

IBM BladeCenter brings a powerful set of capabilities to the carrier environment, including the ability to flexibly deploy a single architecture and components across the IT and Network sides of the business, to help dramatically lower operating costs and capital expenditures. The entire IBM BladeCenter family utilizes the same blades, switches, storage and I/O platforms, while enhanced virtualization technologies also enable server, storage and I/O sharing across multiple systems of blades -- making it ideal for the most demanding telecommunications environments for activities such as new service rollouts and provisioning.

The powerful new BladeCenter HT system, featuring dual and quad-core Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron and IBM Power processor-based blades, will support a substantial increase in aggregate performance and throughput from 4Gb to up to 40Gb in a single blade and 1.2Tb across the system backplane. Increased capacity and scalability with BladeCenter HT also helps clients consolidate existing and new workloads efficiently.

IBM BladeCenter HT: System is being designed to meet Network Equipment Building System (NEBS) Level 3 and European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) standards and will be hardened to withstand high temperature, airborne contaminants, electrostatic discharge and other environmental conditions.
IBM 4 x 1 AdvancedMC Carrier Blade: Blade created in collaboration with GE Fanuc will support four standard off-the- shelf full height AMC cards enabling legacy WAN I/O transport, media gateway and signaling internetworking applications.
IBM NGN Gateway Blade: Blade designed for telco solutions will deliver robust external GbE network connectivity beyond that available on any current IBM blade server, ideal for Video on Demand, security applications and environments requiring special purpose ports such as virtual private networks (VPN).
Nortel 10Gb Ethernet Switch Module for BladeCenter: Technology will help Service Providers increase the performance of multi-core networks by delivering higher levels of bandwidth and throughput for applications, while improving efficiency and resource sharing of next-generation network infrastructures through increased 10G Ethernet port availability.
IBM BladeCenter HT is planned to be available in the second quarter of 2007.