IBM and Bull expand relationship

New initiatives for the UNIX and Blade markets as Companies celebrate 15th anniversary of relationship

IBM and Bull have announced the expansion of their relationship with new initiatives for the UNIX and blade server markets. The companies also announced that they have reached the 15th anniversary of their successful relationship, a strategic agreement with one of the longest life spans in the fast-moving IT market.

New initiatives for the Blade server market

IBM and Bull are announcing today that they are expanding their relationship into the blade server market. Blade computers integrate servers, storage, networking and applications into one system that allows users to run their businesses with fewer IT staff and energy resources. Owing to their simplicity, blade servers have become a significant segment of the worldwide server market.

Effective immediately, IBM and Bull are extending their OEM agreement to integrate IBM blade servers into Bull's Escala and NovaScale product lines. Notably, the x86-based NovaScale Blade Series systems Bull has offered since 2003 will now be procured through this OEM relationship, as will Bull Escala EL460B.

“Bull selected IBM blade technology for its Escala and NovaScale product lines because we believe it is the best blade solution on the market today,” said Philippe Miltin, Vice President, Bull Products and Systems. “We are pleased to offer our clients the superior reliability, energy efficiency and openness that IBM blade technology provides.”

NovaScale and Escala blade systems will share a common chassis, helping customers to mix and match both x86 and Power-based blade systems into the same physical environment, allowing clients to run all of their diverse work loads inside a single architecture that reduces complexity and improves systems management.

Development of new UNIX systems based on the POWER6 processor

IBM and Bull are accelerating the development of POWER6-based servers.

The two companies have recently expanded their R&D collaboration, with Bull taking responsibility for the development and validation of select POWER6-based entry range systems. These systems will be marketed by IBM as part of its System p range, and by Bull as part of its Escala range.

Initially announced by IBM in May 2007, POWER6 processor, the world’s fastest chip, is built using IBM’s state-of-the-art 65 nanometer process technology. At 4.7GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it, meaning customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half. The first system announced by IBM and Bull based on this technology was a 16-core midrange server (IBM System p 570, Bull Escala PL1660R). In November 2007, the companies announced their first POWER6-based blade servers (IBM BladeCenter JS22, Bull Escala EL460B).

Moreover, Bull key UNIX experts have been recently involved in the co-writing of IBM’s Redbooks on Advanced Power Virtualization and Workload Partitions. In parallel, they have worked on the Beta program of the newly announced Workload Partition feature, now available with AIX6.

15 years of joint innovation

Initially launched in 1992 as an OEM agreement and as a technology co-operation agreement in the then-emerging UNIX market, the relationship has enabled Bull to bring to market the Escala product line, a wide range of servers supporting the AIX operating system and based on the Power processor platform. Thousands of customers have chosen Escala servers as the platform for their high-performance, mission-critical business applications.

Bull’s contribution to the development of the AIX ecosystem has made this technology one of the most important in the market. Since its inception, the relationship has been founded on active marketing by Bull of the Power-based Escala product line, but also on a very strong technology and R&D collaboration. Overall, a team of more than 100 engineers is currently involved at Bull in the relationship with IBM and in the development of hardware and software products related to AIX and Power.

“The expansion of our relationship with Bull will enable us to increase the range of industry-leading servers for our clients on innovative new technologies,” said Bill Zeitler, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “We are extremely pleased to enter new domains of collaboration with Bull, notably in the blade server space, where we expect that Bull skills in building complex, demanding infrastructure solutions will bring more success to our strategic partnership.”