IBM Strengthens Database Portfolio With New Informix Dynamic Server

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 11 -- code-named "Cheetah," -- a next-generation data server which, for the first time, brings mainframe-like continuous availability and disaster recovery capabilities to global data centers.

The new IDS 11 is tuned to deliver a combination of increased performance, reliability and scalability, along with the ability to handle massive volumes of complex data at very high speeds -- essential capabilities in today's demanding, time-sensitive information management environments.

IDS 11 also enables customers to enhance information management for their cluster server environments using technology borrowed from IBM's mainframe systems. As a result, IDS 11 is the first data server in the industry to provide clustered data centers with continuous data availability and disaster recovery regardless of the geographic location or distance between backup data center sites.

With the arrival of IDS 11, IBM has, yet again, enhanced the most complete and versatile, end-to-end data server lineup in the industry, less than a year after unveiling the DB2 9 Viper data server. IDS 11 is expected to further expand IBM's fast-growing database business, which generated double-digit revenue growth in 1Q 2007 and gained share vs. the competition.

"IDS 11 performs right out of the box and enables customers to quickly react to changing market demands by providing uninhibited access to important business information," said Arvind Krishna, vice president IBM data servers. "With near hands-free administration, greater reliability and its global availability feature, IDS 11 offers companies superior data center performance at the lowest total cost of ownership."

IDS 11 will provide higher performance and lower total cost of ownership to customers and solutions that require little or no database administration (DBA) support to manage a multitude of remote data server locations, such as retail stores, hotels, banking branches, hospitals, etc.

The versatile IDS 11 also benefits smaller companies and organizations that rely upon uninterrupted information access, but don't have large IT staffs to manage numerous data server instances. For example, online gaming provider, WorldWinner, is looking to IDS 11 to support its Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) games -- from managing the games and tracking information about players, to authenticating their identification and billing information -- in real-time.

"Informix Dynamic Server has helped make us the predominant site on the Internet for skill-based game tournaments, we're seeing such extreme performance improvements that our speeds are now serving as a benchmark in the industry," said Joe Bai, Chief Information Officer, WorldWinner. "With IDS 'Cheetah,' it's almost as if Informix built a new release just for me. Informix has given us a path toward better response time, and a low-cost means of growth."

The impact of IDS 11 will extend far beyond the gaming market to other real-world situations that affect end-users. For example, the US 911 emergency call network relies upon IDS and every single VISA credit authorization in the US is processed through IDS in real-time. These customers benefit from the near-zero response time IDS offers and will further benefit from the IDS 11's ability to provide highest availability and disaster recovery capability in the industry.

To help customers in all industries accelerate time-to-value for new applications and in porting existing applications, IDS 11 features significant enhancements to application development and provides extended support for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) application development collaboration and integration.

IDS 11 also includes enhanced support for hierarchical data structures, built-in flexible text searches unstructured documents and enhanced support for datatypes support for distributed queries across multiple data server instances.

New in IDS 11

The IDS 11 continuous availability feature offers significant cost savings with support for cluster solutions, providing scalability to meet growing business demands, and failover recovery from any node to ensure continuous business operations. Additionally, IDS extends high availability with multiple HDR sites.

IDS 11 offers Advanced Access Control, which incorporates industry-leading technology first introduced in DB2 9 Viper, including cell, column and row level label based access control (LBAC) for more secured data accesses. LBAC is a unique data access capability that provides an extremely flexible means of defining security hierarchies and classification levels. LBAC then allows users to apply these definitions to the information that is being managed. The new labeling capability provides new ways to control access to sensitive data stored within the database.

Another key feature in IDS 11 is the ability to offer an even greater reduction in hands-on database administration, freeing up DBA resources to address other business needs, as well as enabling integration of administration functions within an application, making IDS invisible to applications that do not want database awareness in their solutions. A new SQL-based Admin API monitors and performs administrative tasks within and across applications and a new data query scheduler monitors events and resources, collecting statistics for automated reporting.

Additional features in IDS 11 include:


-- GUI-based IDS Admin for remote administration
-- Web Feature Service API for location services
-- Built-in functions for XML publishing
-- New and updated DataBlades
-- Customizable server footprint

IDS 11 was developed in conjunction with numerous business partners who participated in an advisory committee that provided important insight and feedback during the IDS 11 development process and helped accelerate the testing and validation of new features.

The IDS 11 data server is a strategic element of IBM's Information Management software portfolio and delivers exceptionally fast OLTP performance, high reliability and low cost administration. IDS is a leading integrated data server in many market segments such as retail, telecommunications, healthcare, government/public sector, banking/finance, entertainment, and SMB. The continued popularity and use of IDS is illustrated by the fact that in North America alone, eight of the top ten retailers and twenty of the top twenty-five supermarkets use IDS.

IDS 11 will be available worldwide beginning on July 6. Customers, developers and partners can find out more about IDS 11 at www.ibm.com/informix/new