Web content 'exploding' in size, says IBM

The ongoing "explosion" of data coming from consumer technologies is pressuring data centers to adopt a quicker and more flexible way to manage data, according to technology giant IBM. During the launch of its new zEnterprise 114 mainframe system on Friday, IBM said different consumer web applications are now demanding more from enterprise systems, but the way data centers are designed couldn't keep up with the exponential demand. Currently, the company said at least 3 million blog posts are written every day, 10 billion tweets are being sent out per year and about 2.5 billion pieces of content are being uploaded to Facebook every week. "This has caused an IT conundrum, or a vicious cycle, where we have inflexible IT systems that are not able to manage change quicker because of the proliferation of lots of data," said Robert Neidig, program director for Systems and Technology Group worldwide sales, IBM. With Internet-connected devices growing at a rate of 42 percent each year, Neidig said data exchanged through this channel has already reached about 1.2 zettabytes in 2010, or equivalent to 1.2 trillion gigabytes. "We need to turn this into a virtuous cycle, so we can manage more data, optimize our systems and make an easier way to get to the cloud, if you wish," he said. To cope with such a demand, Neidig said businesses need to implement systems that are highly scalable and are more powerful. But unfortunately, such systems available in the market today require high overhead costs, leaving small and medium businesses (SMB) trailing the growth race. Neidig said this is one of the reasons they decided to release a more affordable version of its recent mainframe model, which is the zEnterprise 114. At a price of about $75,000, the new mainframe server is the cheapest mainframe server to date. Neidig said they are specifically targeting SMBs so that the mainframe can be "the foundation for their data centers" as it costs about 25 percent less than the usual mainframe but offers 25 percent more performance. "[The mainframe] is really for high-volume transactions. It's a good number-crunching machine, perfect for companies' large databases," he added. Along with the mainframe, IBM also launched the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension, which extends the qualities of the mainframe by integrating other server types and workloads into it. "The zEnterprise System can now integrate and manage workloads running on tens of thousands of off-the-shelf applications on select general purpose IBM POWER7-based and System x blades," the company said. This new addition basically simplifies management of servers already present in the data center and complements the processing power of the mainframe, it added. Up to 112 blade center can be integrated and managed using this extension, but only Linux-based systems are compatible for now. "Suport for Microsoft Windows on select System x servers will follow," it added. — TJD, GMA News