IBM to Introduce a New Class of Open Virtualization

As part of its new systems strategy, IBM today introduced a standards-based virtualization platform that will allow customers to pool, manage and optimize their IT resources across a variety of servers, networking and storage devices in order to help improve the economics and operations of under-utilized IT assets.

The IBM Virtualization Engine 2.0 platform uses open interfaces, virtualization building blocks and Web services to connect server and storage systems. IBM Business Partners provide solutions that are critical to expand the pool across the datacenter.

"Virtualization Engine has evolved to a highly integrated open standards platform based on a four-year R&D push across IBM and in collaboration with various business partners," said Rod Adkins, vice president of development, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "The platform helps customers to drive much greater asset utilization and management simplification of their complete, open IT infrastructure on a scale never before seen."

IBM's virtualization innovations are designed to help address the spiraling cost of systems management by enabling clients to manage and administer their IT resources more easily. The Virtualization Engine console provides a single view of systems and platform health, as well as a road map or "topology," for the virtualized systems infrastructure. This can minimize the necessity for specific operating systems skills for some IT operations personnel.