Smarter Computing and Breakthrough IT Economics

Smarter Computing
and Breakthrough
IT Economics

2 SMARTER COMPUTING AND BREAKTHROUGH IT ECONOMICS

Executive Summary Smarter Computing
The IT industry is faced with the challenge of meeting an ever On a Smarter Planet, opportunities for innovation are tremen-
increasing demand for processing while holding finite budgets. dous across industries. Leading enterprises in every industry
Leading clients are already addressing this challenge through are helping to transform the world we live in. Entire industry
a new era of computing—Smarter Computing. Smarter ecosystems are becoming instrumented and interconnected.
Computing is about transforming IT to deliver breakthrough With this, the possibility to create entirely new operating
economics and support innovation. It is a path that clients models arises. These opportunities for innovation bring
can take to transform their IT infrastructure by integrating, challenges with them. Every IT organization faces the reality
automating and securing their IT. This approach results in that the demand for computing capacity is nearly insatiable
breakthrough economics that dramatically lowers the cost while their IT budgets are increasingly viewed as a means
of delivering workloads. of cost control. To address this “IT Conundrum”, forward
thinking IT leaders are embracing the next era of computing—
Powerful servers in this era of Smarter Computing can
Smarter Computing.
run many workloads simultaneously. In this context, cost
per workload becomes an important metric to discuss Leaders in this new era understand that the traditional
and quantify IT economics. How can clients deliver their approach of just adding more servers, storage, networking
workloads at the lowest cost per workload? and other system components to meet increasing demand is
no longer a sustainable model. This traditional approach ends
In this whitepaper, we will look at multiple case studies that
in hardware sprawl, bloated software and labor costs, higher
demonstrate how Smarter Computing delivers improved IT
environmental costs, all contributing to higher total IT costs.
economics. The case studies cover different IT domains—
A smarter approach to computing makes it possible to meet
optimized systems, federated data, Cloud and new service
increasing demand and to support innovation while managing
delivery models.
to stay within nearly flat IT budgets. Smarter Computing
Leaders who are embracing the Smarter Computing applies architectural choices to integrate, automate and
approach recognize that as intelligence is infused into secure IT infrastructures, thereby transforming the economics
products, processes, and systems, the possibility arises to of IT while freeing teams to focus on new innovation.
create entirely new revenue streams and business models.
IT leaders are realizing that they need to understand the true
More importantly, they are actively transforming their IT
cost of delivering workloads, especially with the emergence
infrastructures, to realize the IT efficiency and innovation
of new hybrid and mission critical workloads. With the right
that is required to capture these business opportunities.
technology and data center architecture, clients are able to
deliver a broad set of workloads at dramatically lower costs

SMARTER COMPUTING AND BREAKTHROUGH IT ECONOMICS 3

SMARTER COMPUTING

Efficient and innovative
IT for improved economics
dramatically reduce cost
per workload.
Automate

Integrate Secure


Cost Per Workload—A Key Metric
For IT Economics
In order to understand the true economic benefits from a As an example, look at the case study below (Figure 1). It
Smarter Computing approach, we need to understand the shows two options for deploying a set of banking workloads.
true cost of delivering a set of workloads. Often, when people In one option, we look at deploying the entire set of workloads
compare the cost of deployment options, they limit the onto a homogeneous (in this case, Intel) environment. In the
comparison to the cost of hardware acquisition. This can other option, we look at doing a “Fit for Purpose” deployment
be quite misleading. It is important to consider all of the key of the workloads onto a zEnterprise system—where workloads
elements of cost. Even for a Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA) with different characteristics are best fit onto the different
calculation alone, the different elements of cost include runtime environments supported in zEnterprise. In order to
software acquisition costs, software S&S (support & understand true value, we need to understand the amount of
subscription) costs, hardware maintenance costs etc., in work being done on the systems being compared. We also
addition to the base hardware acquisition costs. A Total Cost need to understand the major line items of cost—in this case,
of Ownership (TCO) calculation typically is much broader and the cost of acquisition includes hardware acquisition, hardware
includes many other relevant elements of cost—some being maintenance, software (hypervisor, OS and middleware)
administration/labor costs, systems management software acquisition, and software S&S costs for a 3 year period. This
costs, power and cooling costs, facilities costs, refresh costs allows us to compare the cost per workload, which in turn
etc. Another important aspect to consider is the amount of gives us a way to quantify IT economics benefits.
work being done on the two systems. If two systems being
compared have been sized upfront so as to guarantee the
FIGURE 1
same amount of work is being done on both, a direct total
cost comparison is valid. In scenarios where we compare 56 Intel Blades Add 192 cores
(8 cores per blade) (IFLs and zBX Blade cores)
systems delivering different amounts of work, it is imperative 448 cores total to 1 zEnterprise
that we reduce it to a cost per workload comparison to
understand true value. Total
Acquisition
$11.5 $7.5
Cost million million

Number
of Workloads 500 500

Cost
per Workload $23.0K $15.0K

3 yr TCA comparison of deployment options for 500 workloads—a mix of light cpu, heavy cpu and heavy
IO workloads. Consolidation ratios derived from IBM benchmarks, zBX with x blades is a statement of
direction only. Results may vary based on customer workload profiles/characteristics. US prices, prices will
vary by country.


Improve IT Economics With
Optimized Systems
The last few years have seen a tremendous increase in server
FIGURE 2: IBM WebSphere Application Server Designed to
hardware capabilities, especially in the number of processor
Leverage Threads in POWER 7 Systems
cores and hardware threads available per server. For example,
IBM® POWER7® can support 4 simultaneous threads per core 5,009
WebSphere IBM BladeCenter transactions
and can scale to 256 cores, making available a massive 1024 Application PS701 per second
hardware threads in a single frame for meeting the ever Server v7.0

increasing demand for processing. However, having this kind
1 Instance AIX V6.1
64-bit
8 cores/3.0GHz
32 Threads
$32
per transaction
of hardware capability is not as useful if the software running per second
on that machine cannot exploit those hardware capabilities.
The IBM Software suite of products is designed to take better
Competitive
746
Oracle Sparc transactions
advantage of available hardware computing capabilities. Application T3-1B per second
Together with IBM hardware and their differentiated features, Server

$137
1 instance Solaris 10 8 cores/1.65GHz
IBM Software exploits the higher number of cores and 64-bit 64 Threads
per transaction
threads, increasing application utilization efficiency, and per second
delivers better price/performance for many workloads.
The following case study (Figure 2) demonstrates how IBM
WebSphere® Application Server exploits the hardware
6.7x
Superior Throughput
4.2x
Lower Cost
capabilities of an IBM POWER7 server. The end result is that
the IBM solution is able to deliver an online banking workload Source: IBM internal benchmarks of a banking workload. Throughput on IBM Blade Center PS701
Express POWER7 3.0GHz: UNIX: (1ch/8co) is 5009 tps. Throughput on SPARC T3-1B SPARC T3
at a much lower cost per workload than a competitive option. 1.65GHz: UNIX: (1ch/8co) is 746 tps. 3 yr TCA calculation includes hardware acquisition, maintenance,
software acquisition and S&S. Publicly available U.S. list prices, prices will vary by country.


A similar case study (Figure 3) demonstrates how IBM
FIGURE 3: IBM WebSphere Message Broker
WebSphere Message Broker effectively leverages an IBM
Leverages Threads in System x Servers
System x server. The test consists of measuring maximum
throughput of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) while
performing a variety of message mediation workloads.
IBM Message IBM 3690 X5 10,962
Broker v7 messages
Intel x7560
Competitor hardware used in this study has double the MQ Server 7.0.1

number of cores as the IBM server, but the competitor
RHEL 5.5 2 sockets, 16 cores
256 GB
$142
per MPS
software is unable to effectively use those cores. The end
result is a 5.4x more cost effective solution from IBM.
Beyond more cores and threads per server, IBM also offers Competitor
Messaging SW on
Competitor HW 492
a wide range of hardware innovations. For example, the Turbo messages per second
Windows Server Intel x7560
Core® mode in POWER7 allows the server to switch to a
$764
2008 R2 4 sockets, 32 cores,
256 GB
configuration with more cache per core, ideal for memory per MPS
hungry data workloads. The MAX5 memory controller in
System x® eX5 servers provides unparalleled memory Source: IBM internal benchmarks. Test consists of measuring maximum throughput of ESB while performing
a variety of message mediation workloads: pass-through, routing, transformation, and schema validation.
capacity on x86 systems. The Parallel Sysplex® is a unique 3 yr TCA includes hardware acquisition, maintenance, software acquisition and S&S. U.S. list prices, prices
will vary by country.
System z® capability to cluster mainframes to achieve near
linear scale and unmatched availability characteristics.
IBM also offers an additional level of optimization with
specialized, purpose-built appliances for running specific
types of workloads. Appliances such IBM WebSphere
DataPower® for SOA, Netezza for data warehousing, and
Cloudburst™ for simplified cloud administration provide
focused capabilities with very quick return on investment.
These appliances are generally comprised of a base operating
system, the necessary middleware, and the application in
question into a single stack, pre-configured to work out-of-
the-box. They typically require lesser skills and labor to
configure and operate. Install time is often mentioned in hours
instead of days or weeks. Focused delivery capabilities make
appliances ideal for certain workload types.
These case studies illustrate the “Integrate” concept of
Smarter Computing. In these cases, IBM has taken on the
task of integration for the client—we have integrated hardware
and software to create optimized systems, driving down cost
per workload dramatically.


Improve IT Economics With
Advanced Data Capabilities
We are seeing an explosion in data – the volume of Solid state disk drives are revolutionizing storage
information being generated has increased exponentially performance—they support much higher Input/Output
in the last few years. This data needs to be stored, managed Operations (IOPS) than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs).
and used efficiently. Storage systems need to be able to However, SSDs are also more expensive than HDDs. Over
handle this growth. Software for managing data needs to provisioning storage systems with SSDs in the hope of getting
leverage hardware capabilities. Business analytics and the best performance often results in huge storage cost
deriving intelligence from information is becoming an increases. We find that, often a small fraction of SSDs will yield
increasingly important factor that decides how competitive the majority of the performance gain possible for a given
a company will be. workload. The ideal price/performance point is reached by
having a judicious mix of SSDs and HDDs. Doing this manually
IBM software, servers and storage systems are meeting this
is quite cumbersome and inefficient. IBM’s Easy Tier can
challenge. IBM offers a broad portfolio of storage systems,
optimize the amount of SSD allocated. It dynamically moves
ranging from small to mid range to enterprise class. There are
data to SSD, based on hot spots detected. Further, Easy Tier
numerous innovations in this space. For example, IBM’s Easy
can dynamically share the available SSDs across many
Tier® capability can automatically allocate optimum amounts
workloads, efficiently allocating the SSDs to the hottest spots.
of Solid State Drives (SSD), thus maximizing SSD performance
gains while minimizing costs. Another example of innovation in The following case study (Figure 4) demonstrates how Easy
this space is the IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer—a purpose- Tier helps improve IT economics when dealing with data
built appliance for optimizing business analytics on zEnterprise. workloads.
Real world Business Analytics workloads need to support
concurrent performance. A typical Business Analytics solution FIGURE 4: EASY TIER IN IBM STORAGE SYSTEMS AUTOMATES
OPTIMUM USE OF SSD
will need to support multiple users executing a wide variety
of queries and reports concurrently. IBM offers packaged
solutions like the IBM Smart Analytics System (ISAS) that 4000 100%
have been built as pre-packaged, pre-configured solutions
13%
to support this kind of real world usage patterns. 3000
11%

6%
3000

1000

0
0 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% SSD

Transactional Database Performance as Blend of SSD is increased
(Transactions per Second)

Just 13% blend of SSD to HDD
achieves 171% performance gain


Improve IT Economics With Private
Clouds And New Service Delivery
Models
Cloud computing is poised to transform the service delivery
FIGURE 4: CONTINUED
model. At an abstract level, it is about delivering hosted
services with some key distinguishing attributes:
$30 $28.35
Elastic Scaling: Resources scale up and down by large
25 $22.65
factors as the demand changes
20
Flexible Pricing: Utility pricing, variable payments, pay-by-
49%
$16.85

15 consumption and subscription models make pricing of IT
$12.66 $11.66
less
services more flexible
10
Ease of Use: End user often just needs a PC with Internet
5
access to request services, without IT skills or knowledge of
0 the system
0 0% 2% 6% 13% 100% SSD
Many businesses are moving to a Cloud Computing model.
Cost of Storage Per Transactions Per Second as SSD Blend is Increased Line-of-business units within organizations are going to
public cloud providers as their low cost, pay-per-use model is
Easy Tier achieves 78% of the maximum seen as more cost effective. Furthermore, faster provisioning
SSD performance potential with a blend of resources offered by them can enable users to respond
of just 13% SSD.
with agility. In some cases, the public cloud model makes the
Source: IBM Internal Study of Benchmark Factory transactional database workload performance as Easy most economic sense. However, IT leaders need to be aware
Tier migrates data to SSD. The performance data contained herein was obtained in a controlled, isolated
environment. Actual results that may be obtained in other operating environments may vary. that in many cases they may be able to provide private cloud
services to their end users much more cost effectively than
paying for external public cloud services.
In general, private clouds are a model for delivering IT
This is an example of the “Automate” principle of Smarter
services in a pay-as-you-go fashion similar to what public
Computing. Automatic allocation of expensive SSD resources
clouds can offer. The difference is that a private cloud is built
in an optimum way results in lowering overall storage costs.
from resources inside an organization and is typically hosted
Automation also reduces labor costs. IBM offers a within the data center to be used by line of business and
comprehensive suite of software products aimed at efficiently other end users within the organization. Workloads run on
automating various data center tasks. Some examples are large scale virtualization platforms. This approach may
software that automatically provisions systems, software that significantly reduce hardware, software and labor costs.
synchronizes the start and stop of sequenced applications, Users request services via a self-service portal and virtual
software that automatically adjusts system resources available machines are quickly provisioned. Labor costs may be
to workloads to meet varying demand etc. Automation not just significantly reduced via standardization and automation.
reduces labor costs; it also improves the quality of service Furthermore, users may be given tools to manage their
delivery. This is especially true as automating mundane applications on the virtual machines that are running their
repetitive tasks eliminates the risk of manual operations error. services and they only pay for what they consume.


IBM offers a wide range of capabilities in the Cloud
FIGURE 5: A FIT FOR PURPOSE PRIVATE CLOUD ON ZENTERPRISE
Computing space. For example, IBM provides large scale
DRAMATICALLY REDUCES COSTS
virtualization environments in POWER7 and zEnterprise that
are ideal to host private clouds. IBM provides software that
manages the entire lifecycle of virtual servers—everything
3 Yr Cost per Workload/Image (USD) Public Cloud
Private Cloud
with zEnterprise
72%
lower overall
TCO
from self-service automated provisioning to metering and
billing based on usage. IBM also offers industry specific 250K

Cloud Service Platforms. An example is the recently 191K
200K
announced IBM Cloud Service Provider Platform, a
comprehensive set of hardware, software and services to 150K

help providers rapidly deliver cloud computing on their own.
100K
78.6K
70.5K
The zEnterprise system provides the broadest architectural
50K 42.0K
support for building a private cloud. Different environments in 11.6K
4.5K
zEnterprise may be used to run workloads without requiring a 0

port or rewrite. Where there is an option, workloads may be Light Intel Heavy Unix Heavy I/O
Workloads Workloads Linux on
best fit to an environment to run at the lowest cost per z Workloads
workload. A Fit-for-Purpose deployment strategy aims to
Source: IBM internal study. zEnterprise configurations needed to support the three workload types were
assign a workload to the environment that best satisfies the derived from IBM internal benchmarks. Public cloud sizing needed to support the three workload types were
particular requirements of that workload. For example, calculated based on compute capacity of public cloud services. 3 yr TCO for public cloud calculated using
web-based calculator made available by the service provided. 3 yr TCO for zEnterprise includes hardware
workloads with heavy IO demand may be best fit on Linux on acquisition, maintenance, software acquisition, S&S and labor. U.S. pricing, prices will vary by country.

z/VM on the z196 portion of zEnterprise. Workloads that have
high CPU demand and that can exploit multithreading may
be best fit on the POWER7 blades in the zBX. Large scale
virtualization on z/VM drive down acquisition costs. The
private data network as well as the private management
network between the z196 and the zBX plus network access
control mechanisms ensure a secure network environment.
Managing this environment with zManager and with
Integrated Service Management software results in lowering
operational costs.
The following cases study (Figure 5) demonstrates how
zEnterprise, with its broad Fit-for-Purpose architectural
support, and Integrated Service Management yields
the lowest cost per workload when delivering private
cloud services.


Integrate, Automate And Secure
To Transform IT
zEnterprise as a private cloud foundation is a perfect example Secure: The zEnterprise system builds on the highly secure
of how the three principles of Smarter Computing—Integrate, environment that traditional mainframes have always provided.
Automate and Secure—come together to transform IT and Traditional System z security mechanisms ensure isolation of
deliver workloads at the lowest cost. users/tenants and centralized access control of all system
resources. System z holds the highest Common Criteria
Integration: By integrating the traditional mainframe with
security rating for commercial operating environments with
POWER7 and Intel* blades, zEnterprise provides a compelling
an Evaluation Assurance Level 5 (EAL5) certification of its
multi-architecture, “Fit for Purpose” platform for deploying
logical partitions. System z also provides advanced encryption
diverse data center workloads with different characteristics. A
capabilities—from built-in encryption capabilities on the
best fit assignment of workloads onto the appropriate
processor chip and specialized crypto cards to IBM software
environments lowers the cost of delivering those workloads
like DB2 that can leverage these capabilities and encrypt
while meeting requirements. Multi-tier and hybrid workloads
data all the way from storage media to channels and buffer
can also leverage this tight integration. For example, web
pools. Hipersockets provide internal secure communication
facing applications on the blades can access backend data
between virtual machines, eliminating the risk of potential
in a highly efficient manner, avoiding complex and expensive
exposures on the physical network. Private networks between
network hops.
the mainframe and blades in the attached BladeCenter
Automation: High levels of automation reduce the labor Extension(zBX) provide secure environments for hybrid and
needed for setting up and maintaining this hybrid virtualized multi-tier workloads. With comprehensive and sophisticated
environment. For example, when a new POWER blade security features pre-built into everything from the hardware,
is added to a zEnterprise system, automation kicks in to networks, channels, virtualization environments and software,
dramatically cut down the steps for setting up and configuring zEnterprise provides an unmatched secure foundation for
the hypervisor and network environments. Lab tests show implementing a private cloud.
that the average time taken for hypervisor setup and
In this use case, we see how Smarter Computing principles
configuration of a single blade goes down from about 46
come together to transform service delivery models.
minutes when done manually to about a minute and a half.
The average time taken for network setup and configuration We have seen examples of Smarter Computing in three key
went down from 26 hours to 5 hours. That is an 81% reduction IT domains. The principles of Smarter Computing are not
in labor time for a specific set of tasks due to automation and limited to just these, but apply to a broad spectrum of IT
translates into labor cost savings and improved time to domains and industries.
solution. The zManager component of zEnterprise ensures
that service levels are met automatically by making computing
resources available to the different virtual machines on
demand. For example, if mean demand changes, zManager
can automatically change the LPAR processor entitlement
values in the POWER7 blade to meet service level agreements.
This ability translates into cost savings as well, as we avoid
having to over provision to meet changes in workload demand.


Conclusion
Integrate: The era of traditional system acquisition
strategies is being replaced by an era of optimized system
acquisition strategy. Make sure you leverage the price/
performance advantages of software/hardware integration
and systems that have been optimized for the particular
needs of your workloads.
Automate: Leverage every opportunity to take advantage
of self tuning and automation capabilities provided by
systems. Eliminating manual repetitive tasks will cut down
systems management and administration costs while
meeting service level agreements.
Secure: The economic impact of a security breach could
be devastating. Make sure your computing foundation is
rock solid in terms of security, privacy and compliance
requirements. Ensure your data is secure in all phases of
use—whether at rest or in motion.
Judicious use of these principles of Smarter Computing
will help clients transform their IT service delivery and drive
down costs. As Smarter Planet transformations continue to
bring business opportunities as well as accompanying IT
challenges, this new era of Smarter Computing promises
to support innovation with breakthrough IT economics.

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
IBM Corporation
Route 100
Somers, NY10589, USA
Produced in the United States
April 2011
All Rights Reserved
*Intel blades in the zBX are currently a Statement of Direction only. All statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are
subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.
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DB2, ESCON, i5/OS, i5/OS (logo), IBM Business Partner (logo), IntelliStation, LoadLeveler, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Operating
System/400, OS/400, PartnerLink, PartnerWorld, PowerPC, pSeries, Rational, RISC System/6000, RS/6000, THINK, Tivoli, Tivoli
(logo), Tivoli Management Environment, WebSphere, xSeries, z/OS, zSeries, AIX 5L, Chiphopper, Chipkill, Cloudscape, DB2 Universal
Database, DS4000, DS6000, DS8000, EnergyScale, Enterprise Workload Manager, General Purpose File System, , GPFS, HACMP,
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