New Enterprise Data Center - IBM

INSPIRE
beyond today´s technology
Suske & Wiske
and energy efficiency!
transavia.com
Business and ICT
IT Optimization
Step back from the hardware
Can IT be a bit more?
English version
New Enterprise
Data Center
IBM’s vision
for the datacenter
of the future

Stop
interviewing for a job.
Start
interviewing for a life.
it makes sense that a company built on reinvention would look for the same thing in the people who work there.
ibM is looking for people interested in transforming their experience into a career where real results are delivered
for clients all over the world. Start rethinking the way the world works at ibm.com/be/employment
ibM and the ibM logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of international business Machines Corp.
in the United States of america and/or other countries. other company, product or service names can be
trademarks or service marks of others. © Copyright ibM Corporation 2008. all rights reserved. Start@ibm

Content
Column IBM Systems and Technology Group and Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Round-table discussion The New Enterprise Data Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Energy Efficiency interview ‘Green IT is the ultimate innovation’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
• Case Randstad and Tempo-Team ‘ICT takes the lead in integration’
• Case IBM Project Big Green
• Column ‘A green kiosk’
• Suske & Wiske on Blades ‘Computers rather than camera’s’
Business Resilience interview ‘Resilience ensures continuity’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
• Availability- and storage-information
Virtualization / consolidation ‘Reclaiming the economies of scale’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
• More attention for the business
• Column ‘In practice: Keep it simple! Virtualize the IT infrastructure’
Information Infrastructure interview ‘Storage re-invented’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
IT Optimization interview ‘Step back from the hardware’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Technology Update ‘A look into the future of IT’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Case transavia .com ‘Business & ICT – Twin Data Center’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48
Column ‘Talking about processors’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Column ‘Can IT be a bit more’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
Colophon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
Content |
3

4
When we show
how new discoveries
can be used in the
real world, we help
companies to be
innovative.

Systems and Technology Group
and Innovation
On behalf of the IBM Systems & Technology Group (STG), I am pleased to be able to introduce
you to the first edition of INSPIRE, a magazine produced by STG. As the Director of STG in the
Benelux, I feel a great deal of pride in the fact that we have been able to put together such an
interesting glossy publication about IT - a subject that is often and, in my view, unfairly thought to
be boring. When people say such things, it upsets me because IT is not boring at all! We couldn’t
imagine a world without IT. Some examples include the budget airline transavia.com which runs on
an IBM Power system, hospitals that store all of their scans on tape drives and Google wouldn’t be
Google if it were not for IBM systems.
W
hy produce a glossy magazine? Because IBM wants
to be the Innovator’s Innovator! When we show how
new discoveries can be used in the real world, we
help companies to be innovative .
IBM hardware and software technologies and how they can be
used, are a big part of how innovation comes about . So, as the
leader of the Systems and Technology Group in the Benelux, I
feel like people are addressing me personally when they talk
about innovation .
For sixteen years in a row, IBM has been the world leader in the
number of patent applications, the result of the development of
a huge number of components that are used in infrastructures
that are self-evident to us today, but that have created great
business value . Did you know for example that the compression
algorithm of your mobile phone is an IBM invention? Did you
know that the laser technology to perform eye corrections is
an IBM patent?
At IBM, we are in the unique position of being able to integrate
those components or building blocks in the advice we give to
clients about their IT solution . When companies purchased
infrastructure in the past, they usually looked at an individual
server or a storage sub-system . Today, there is a much more
holistic approach and companies look at the ensemble of
the installed infrastructure - the data center . Aspects like
virtualization, optimisation, consolidation, energy efficiency,
administration and automation, security and availability are
part of that approach .
IBM’s holistic approach to the New Enterprise Data Center
(NEDC), which is discussed in depth in this issue, is the
expression of our vision on the evolution of the data center .
Discover how - by creatively using components and
methodologies - we have been able to develop the traditional
data center into a dynamic data center . Over time, this kind of
development will be a necessity for all of the companies that
want to stay competitive in their markets . I will be pleased to
help you in making that transformation . n
Bart Windal
Director of Systems and Technology Group, Benelux
Column |
5

6
The
New Enterprise
Data Center
How can your organisation achieve superior business value and support from
its data center? That’s a complex question, as the data center faces many
challenges: cost and service delivery; business resilience and security; and
escalating energy requirements.

Fact: IT service delivery is changing . The focus is shifting
towards the services provided by the infrastructure,
while streamlining the underlying technology that
enables these services . This new focus yields a more
productive and satisfied user community, as well as better alignment
between business priorities and information technology
investment . At the same time, the technology-centric IT model is
moving to one based more around social and human interaction .
This is the realm of Web 2 .0, which is all about connecting people
and making technology more efficient for them .
Fact: We are experiencing a data sustainability paradox . As the
world becomes digital, there’s a higher risk of losing the world’s
data: Our ability to store digital bits increases, but our ability to
store them over time decreases . Last year, IDC published a report
stating that, in 2006, a data volume of 161 exabytes (1018 bytes)
was created . This number is expected to grow to 988 exabytes by
2010 .
Fact: Regulations require organisations to preserve large amounts
of heterogeneous data for long periods of time . We are excellent
at storing bits but not at storing
information . (Preservation of
information implies continuing
understandability and usability,
something that is very difficult
to achieve and requires constant
vigilance .)
Rather than simply focusing on
cost-to-do-business, information
technology should link with and complement business strategy .
After all, information technology has to comply with the requirements
of its context, such as regulations – which requires an
efficient, flexible, and resilient infrastructure that allows one to
anticipate and respond rapidly to shifting business requirements .
All these requirements have driven us to the evolution of a new
data center architecture .
Business drivers for the
new data center architecture
IBM’s experience with data center transformation is the basis for
its holistic approach to IT transformation . It has allowed IBM to
develop a vision and strategy for the future of enterprise computing
. According to Ludwig Van den bergh, IBM Technical Director
STG Benelux, “The new enterprise data center leverages today’s
The New Enterprise Data Center
ensures the flexibility organizations
need to operate efficiently in a fast
changing environment.
best practices and technologies to better manage cost, to improve
operational performance and resiliency, and to respond quickly
to business needs . The data center allows for massive scalability
and dynamic responsiveness, while providing an energy-efficient
and resilient infrastructure .”
In its design, IBM focuses on improvement in IT efficiency . The
new enterprise data center helps transcend traditional operational
issues to achieve new levels of efficiency, flexibility, and
responsiveness . Virtualization detaches applications and business
services from the underlying IT resources, improving their portability
. It also exploits highly optimised systems and networks to
improve efficiency and reduce overall costs .
The second focal point is rapid service deployment – the ability
to deliver high-quality service . As Van den bergh explains, “Good
service management is what enables the visibility, control, and
automation that is required to deliver high-quality service at any
scale . Maintaining user satisfaction and ensuring cost efficiency
and return on investment depend on the organisation’s ability
to see the business (visibility), manage it (control) and leverage
automation (automate) to drive
efficiency and operational agility .”
The design of the new enterprise
data center is also focused on being
highly responsive and businessgoal
driven . A highly efficient,
shared infrastructure helps businesses
respond instantaneously to
evolving demands and allows them
to make sound business decisions based on information that has
been obtained in real time .
Evolution stages of the new enterprise data center
IBM has identified three adoption stages in the evolution towards
the new enterprise data center . “Each adoption stage has a set of
objectives that can be grouped into patterns: consolidation, virtualization,
flexible IT, and IT as a pattern,” explains Fabian Michel,
Systems Architect & Senior IT Specialist . “Each pattern is aligned
with a set of characteristics that serve as the building blocks for
the new enterprise data center: virtualization, energy efficiency,
information infrastructure, security and business resiliency,
business-driven service management, and IT service delivery .
These building blocks are modular, allowing the new enterprise
data center to have a phased evolution .”
New Enterprise Data Center |
7

The first adoption stage focuses heavily on
simplification . It provides control over the
IT infrastructure through the reduction of
complexity and cost . In this stage, the inefficiency
associated with business-unit-specific
infrastructure designs becomes apparent .
The second or shared stage involves
moving from organisational and technological
silos to a shared services model .
This stage creates a shared IT infrastructure
that can be provisioned and
scaled rapidly and efficiently . Advanced
virtualization patterns and increased
automation are key elements in this
stage of IT transformation .
The third or dynamic stage focuses on
the service-oriented IT delivery model .
The virtual infrastructure and the
automated service-management capabilities
from the previous stages now create
a layer of abstraction between the IT
8 | New Enterprise Data Center
service and the physical infrastructure .
This hides the technological complexity
and makes IT available as a consumable
service . IT now becomes a real contributor
to business innovation .
Characteristics of
the new enterprise
data center
Highly virtualised resources
“IT-consolidation roadmaps and virtualization
technology both optimise IT
resources while delivering on service-level
agreements,” says Michel . “Consolidation
addresses simplification and the reduction
of IT and facilities assets . It standardises
IT-management processes while also serving
as an initial step towards achieving higher
levels of virtualization .” Consolidation typically
spans servers, storage, networks and
data center facilities . Disposing of distribu-
ted servers with under-utilised capacities
and consolidating them into fewer, more
efficient and better-managed servers offers
significant benefits .
Virtualization of IT assets improves utilisation,
simplifies systems management
and enables dynamic system migrations . It
removes the barriers that inhibit the increased
use of IT resources . It maximises the
use of existing IT investments and improves
productivity by fostering an environment
that supports composite applications . And it
aligns the performance of the IT infrastructure
with the organisation’s business goals .
Efficient, green and
optimised infrastructure
“Forty percent of data center operators
report power demand outstripping supply,”
says Stephane Caprace, IBM System x
& BladeCenter IT Specialist . “The new
enterprise data center improves data center

energy efficiency through the exploitation
of virtualization-enabled consolidation,
resource optimisation, and active energy
management .”
As energy costs keep rising and the power
required for non-IT equipment in the data
center – such as that for fans, cooling and
UPS systems – represents on average about
60 percent of total annual energy consumption
, IBM has learned that it can implement
effective solutions to reduce such high consumption
by 15 to 40 percent annually .
According to Caprace, “IBM systems lead
the way to higher efficiency and improve
the ratio of computer capacity per kilowatt
consumed . Our leadership in virtualization
means that servers achieve a higher level
of utilisation, significantly reducing the
number of servers and, consequently, the
space, power and cooling required in the
data center .”
We already have the technological
answers to many technical
questions, but now we have to
focus on showing the advantages
beyond technology.
Information infrastructure
According to IDC , the enterprise data
center of the future will be focused
on the business value of data and
information services, on leveraging
storage-infrastructure efficiency
through policy-based software, and
on true automation . Ingo Hesemans,
IBM Storage Technical Sales Specialist,
adds, “Data growth, regulations for
data retention, and formal compliance
requirements present new challenges .
The requirements for the information
infrastructure need to be identified early
on and must address both the selection
of virtualization technologies and the
flexibility offered through serviceoriented
delivery . With proper mapping
to the operational requirements, the
information infrastructure will provide
the organisation with information on
demand .”
Security and business resiliency
In a highly shared environment, isolation
management is a critical additional
security requirement . Customers wish
to see familiar and intuitive notions of
physical isolation mirrored in the shared
environment . With the provisioning of
services and applications in a shared, virtual
environment, isolation policies can be
consistently managed through all layers of
the IT stack .
The ability to provide a secure infrastructure
that incorporates recovery and
resiliency at all layers, from hardware to
the business as a whole, is a necessity in
today’s global, 24/7 economy . The challenge
is exacerbated by an increasing need
to share infrastructure resources among
applications . According to Hesemans,
“With the shift from a customised IT environment
to a flexible, shared, and highly
New Enterprise Data Center |
9

optimised one, the trade-off between redundancy and optimal
sharing can be better managed in an integrated manner . A best-practices-based
security management system addresses these challenges,
managing all communication channels, servers and data .”
Forrester Research has revealed that customers are spending more
money to recover from disasters than to pro-actively consider a
data center resiliency strategy to prevent them . Through its service
orientation and service-management focus, the new enterprise data
center offers the organisation the opportunity to consider resiliency
in an integrated manner . The design of the new enterprise data center
and its recovery capabilities offer the necessary level of resiliency .
Business-driven service management
Gartner predicts that by 2012 only five percent of large enterprises
will achieve operational and infrastructural management excellence
. The new enterprise data center helps businesses meet the
challenge with an integrated service-management framework that
enables the fusion of people, processes, and technology .
The new enterprise data center service-management framework
consists of comprehensive service-management, operationalmanagement,
and process-management components . These help
the organisation to establish a foundation for delivering processes as
responsive services . The service-management framework allows the
organisation to achieve efficiency through process innovation and
integration, to realise new value from existing IT assets, to reduce IT
maintenance cost through self-managing deployment capabilities, to
improve staff productivity and to increase the speed and quality of
change and configuration management .
Service-oriented IT delivery
The complexity and fragility of distributed IT keep organisations
from meeting their growing needs in a timely and cost-effective
manner . “Organisations are looking for a more agile IT environment
that can keep up with the speed of business,” argues Jos Vermaere,
IBM Systems Architect & Executive IT Specialist . “The answer lies
within the service-orientation paradigm . Based on the concepts and
principles of service-oriented architecture, the service-oriented IT
delivery model transforms the IT infrastructure into a collection of
service components with common standards and interfaces that are
flexible in adapting to business demands .”
The emergence of cloud-computing-style architectures – delivering
IT services over a network – will become mainstream in the adoption
of service-oriented IT delivery .
Cloud computing is the foundation for a new way of delivering IT
capabilities, similar to the way utility companies deliver water or
electrical services . Says Vermaere, “Consumers rely on electric com-
10 | New Enterprise Data Center
panies to provide electricity when and where it is needed . Likewise,
a cloud-computing platform dynamically provisions, configures,
reconfigures, and de-provisions IT capability as needed, transparently
and seamlessly, allowing IT consumers to focus on their
value proposition .” A cloud-computing infrastructure conforms to
a set of well-defined specifications for the life-cycle management
of data, applications and services . Advanced virtualization techniques
provided by ensembles – large pools of similar resources that
are managed as one – will further accelerate the adoption of cloud
computing .
Service-oriented IT delivery consists of a common set of reusable
infrastructure components, set up as shared services within the
environment . These reusable infrastructure components provide a
framework for the application portfolio and eliminate the need to
build multiple infrastructures that support different applications .
“This new model of IT delivery will help to deliver infrastructural
services, hiding technological complexity and exposing IT capabilities
as a portfolio of services,” explains Vermaere . “The model
provides the flexibility to compose services across a multitude of IT
assets and simplifies service delivery, thus improving the servicelevel
agreements .”
IBM’s service-oriented IT delivery framework simplifies management
complexity and increases asset utilisation and human resources
productivity, all allowing for more dynamic infrastructure responsiveness
to business processes . In doing so, it enables a company to
attain higher levels of business and IT agility, enhancing speed-tomarket
business services .
Industry leader
Transforming the data center requires cutting-edge technology and
a wealth of IT skills . Johan Van Geit, Manager IBM Systems & Technology
Group explains: “With IBM as a partner, your organisation has
access to the most comprehensive IT skillsets and advanced technologies
available anywhere in the world . We offer a broad range of data
center service products and the highly skilled IT architects and IT
specialists required to transform all aspects of your organisation’s IT
infrastructure .
“IBM offers the broadest array of service management software,
dynamic middleware and IT tools . Our server and storage products
and services provide industry-leading technologies for virtualization,
high-volume computing, energy management, cooling, and
massive scalability .”
IBM’s skills and technology, combined with its advanced research
capabilities and exceptional focus on customer value, has made it
the industry leader in data center transformation .

New Enterprise
Data Center
IBM’s vision for the datacenter of the future
11

12 12
Green
is the
IT
ultimate
innovation
Energy effi ciency
becomes necessary
in the data center
Green IT is more than just hype. It is fast
becoming a necessity for any company that
processes and stores a lot of information to
re-evaluate how its data center is being
furnished. The machines take up increasingly
more space, using increasingly greater
power, and at increasingly high energy costs.
Thanks to IBM’s Quick Scan, it is possible to
rapidly identify quick wins, and those who go
further can easily achieve signifi cant cost and
effi ciency savings in their IT by simply making
their data center greener.

Green IT is the ultimate innovation, and it leads to real
financial benefits,” confidently proclaims Aernoud
van de Graaff, IBM Green Data Center Leader Benelux .
According to Van de Graaff, there are still a lot of
profits to be realised from data centers, and there are many
different ways in which companies can do this by making
their data centers truly greener .
The facilities provide the first area of focus . The power needs
of the equipment, including the UPS, are an increasing
cost, but simply installing modern machines can lead to
substantial savings . According to Van de Graaff, “The latest
machines are much more energy efficient, with only 5%
energy loss compared to up to 20% with older equipment .”
And when it comes to cooling, substantial gains can be
achieved: “Traditionally, cooling for the data center has
meant using air conditioners, which require a lot of power,”
he explains . “In the new data center, you use environmental
inputs as much as possible, enabling you to cool it with
minimal effort . This can be done by using the coolness of
the outside air, the ground, or cold water . It does not matter
which environmental factor you draw on, just that as little
power as possible is used .”
Re-use
What this does require, however, is a radical change to
the way we perceive cooling . “It is crucial that heat is no
longer regarded as a cost but rather as something that is
valuable on its own,” he explains . “You can re-use it for
all sorts of new things, such as the heating of a building
or a nearby pool .” That is why increasing numbers of data
centers are looking into the potential for re-using heat – a
nod to the ‘cradle-to-cradle’ concept of totally waste-free
production that is gaining increasing interest . “Re-use is the
ultimate goal,” agrees Van de Graaff . “And with the growing
popularity of water-cooled computers, it is becoming an
increasingly interesting proposition . The water that comes
out after cooling has a high temperature – over 60 degrees
Celsius . And because that heat is already in the water, you
can do a lot with it .”
But apart from applying new technologies to the challenge,
the very layout of the servers in the data center is also
important . “You must place the machines in such a way
IBM Belgium
that they are optimally cooled, using as little
energy as possible,” says Van de Graaff . “To do
that, you can create warm and cold corridors,
where warm and cold air are separated in
physically distinct spaces: The cold air can
only enter via the front of the server, and exit
from the rear .”
Alternatively, one current technological
solution to the problem is to bring the cooling
closer to the server itself . “Whereas in the
past, we used to cool the entire space, we now
increasingly place cooling elements directly
in the rack . That way, the cooling is regulated
locally, and the temperature is only lowered
where it is necessary .”
Consolidation and virtualization
The hardware layer is the second area to
offer plenty of opportunities for realising
energy efficiency savings in most data centers .
“Through extensive consolidation and
virtualization, you can achieve substantial
energy savings,” explains Van de Graaff . “Such
an approach is not quite considered ‘business
as usual’ yet, but we see increasing numbers
of companies getting seriously involved in it .
By implementing it, one can also save a lot
on managing the hardware, because you can
have high utilisation, with servers hardly ever
used at their full capacity .
Green | 13

14 | Green
Green IT requires
a holistic and
integrated
approach.
“There is a limited need to have servers running at peak
capacity – perhaps once per month . And at night, hardly any
activity takes place . With the correct tooling, you can ensure
that the only servers running are those that are really needed .
So you can shift the workload so that only the minimum
numbers of servers needed to handle the workload are switched
on . The rest are switched off until they are needed . These are the
innovative techniques currently in full development at IBM .”
A comparable story applies to storage . “What storage do you
need for what?” he asks . “With the XIV portfolio, for example,
you can use relatively cheap disks that are fi ve-to-10 times larger
than a fi bre channel disk . Per unit, the large disks use as much
power to store data as the smaller fi bre disks . In addition, the
XIV stores the data by fragmenting it over many different disks .
So when a disk fails, the system simply continues since the data
is also available elsewhere . The data is replicated quickly, and
becomes available once more .”
But all those machines are not even needed if the application
and data layer are organised effi ciently – and such economy
will also automatically save space and cooling . “Still, it
shows that many companies have a substantial amount of
redundancy in their application portfolio,” continues Van de
Graaff . “The rationalisation of those applications to a serviceoriented
architecture (SOA) eliminates that redundancy, and
substantially reduces the demand on the servers . How much
this saves varies from company to company but, as a rule,
there are some dozens of percentages of redundancy in the
application portfolio .
“An additional advantage is that the business automatically
becomes more effi cient . Less maintenance is needed, and the
applications are used more effi ciently . But the main advantage
is that, from an energy-effi ciency point of view, substantially
fewer servers are needed .”
Strategy
The same principles apply to the quantity of data in a company .
“We have a tendency to store everything, which clearly leads to
a larger proportion of redundancy in the data,” explains Van
de Graaff . “You defi nitely need to take that out and look at how
you store data . Do you need to have it at hand on a running disk
that uses power, or can the information also be on tape – so
it is being stored but takes slightly longer to access? Data for
archiving purposes usually does not have to be in a real-time
network environment . Plus, there are techniques for putting
data on tape in such a way that the system can approach it as if
it were on disk .”
One effi ciency that most companies still fail to realise in this
area is a very simple one: Give data an end-date . “In most cases,
you no longer need data from 30 years ago, and the person who
stored it is long gone . We often only store because we have no
control over it . If you can bring segmentation into this, you
can keep your data clean, and there are numerous clever tools
available for doing that .”
A fi nal area that is crucial to making the data center greener
is its strategy . Apart from applying technical innovations to
the issue, it is important that green IT is also an initiative in
which the company and its people play an important role .
“The majority of companies still give no attention to energy
effi ciency when it comes to IT,” says Van de Graaff . “So, you need
to ensure that targets are set and that someone is responsible
on a management level . The fi rst step is clearly to know what
you have, and the second step is to measure how much energy
you use . The former is diffi cult, the latter even more so . But
there are also clever technological solutions for this that will
help . And once you have measured how much you use and
where, you can translate that knowledge into what you need
to do to use energy more effi ciently, both at a technical and an
organisational level . Ultimately, green IT requires a holistic and
integrated approach .”

CASE
Randstad and Tempo-Team:
ICT takes the lead in integration
About two years ago, Randstad started developing a new ERP front-office application for all its
employees in Belgium. However, in the spring of 2008, it was announced that Randstad would
be merging with Vedior. By joining forces, Randstad and Vedior would become global Number 2
in the HR services sector, with the biggest geographical spread and the largest service offering
worldwide. For the Benelux, Vedior changed its name to Tempo-Team – another strong brand to
have operational in these markets next to the Randstad brand. The challenge for ICT was substantial
– not just to offer a performant application for employees and customers but also to take the lead in
the integration of Randstad and Tempo-Team. IBM proved to be an essential partner in this.
The decision by Randstad Belgium to build a new
front-office application, named Duo, dates back
about two years . “Following the experiences at
Randstad the Netherlands, we decided to build the
application with Oracle technology,” says Marc Van Harneveldt,
ICT Manager at Randstad . “For the hardware, we
selected the IBM Power System p with AIX .” That strategic
choice of IBM was not a hard one for Randstad . Firstly, Randstad
Belgium already uses IBM System i for its front office and
back office and so is familiar with IBM technology . And secondly,
Randstad the Netherlands already works with System p
and their good experiences with it gave the decision extra
weight . “For a long time, the Randstad Group and IBM have
had a very good relationship . We are simply very satisfied
with the IBM material,” he explains .
Then Tempo-Team joined!
Then, at the exact moment the programming of the Duo
application started and the decision about which IBM systems
to buy was about to be made , the merger with Vedior/Tempo-
Team was announced . Obviously, Tempo-Team already had
its own ERP system . “So we invested quite a bit of time in
comparing our system with Randstad’s new ERP system,”
explains Francis De Schutter, Director ICT at Tempo-Team .
“Our conclusion from that was clear: The Duo application
was one step ahead, and Randstad had also made the right
choice on hardware . So we were more than happy to join in
the project .”
ICT as the basis for integration
That is how a new central idea emerged: Commercially,
Randstad Belgium and Tempo-Team Belgium would remain
separate organisations . But when it came to ICT, they would
be supported from a shared-service center . The importance of
ICT in such an integration project should not be underestimated,
according to Marc Van Harneveldt . “If you want to offer
shared services in an organisation, then ICT is going to be its
foundation . The point of a shared-service center is, of course,
to share certain aspects of work and to reduce costs . ICT offers
the underlying infrastructure for this – the network and the
applications that you share . That’s the way you get synergies .”
Obviously, the integration goes much further than the new
Duo application and the IBM System p-machines, but this collaboration
has become a good testing ground . As Van Harneveldt
explains, “This is the very first large project that has been
developed between the two commercial organisations around
how they will function together .”
Case | 15

16 | Case
Crucial for the business
It is clear that the front-office application is of crucial impor-
tance to the activities of Randstad and Tempo-Team . “That is
what we use for our entire business: the registration, selection
and matching of candidates; requests by customers; contracting
with temporary workers and with clients; and the
processing of timesheets” says Francis De Schutter . “All this
also interfaces perfectly with the existing back office, which
runs on System i . There, the social security, the salary administration,
the invoicing and the financial reporting are handled .”
So it comes as no surprise that, when it comes to business
continuity, the necessary provisions have been made . Randstad
has two data centers: one production center and one back-up
center . Also the Power System p 570 (with Power6 4 .7 GHz
processors) is installed ‘double’, whereby the one machine can
take over from the other at any given moment . This is also the
case for the other hardware that was delivered by IBM in the
framework of this project: two DS 4800 Storage servers and 22
BladeCenters .
Ready for the future
‘Future-oriented’ was a key phrase in the development of
the new application . Marc Van Harneveldt clarifies: “We
did some strategic thinking to see how we could prepare
the organisation for the future when it comes to IT . So
we needed an application that was not just better and
more performant, but also future-oriented – one that, for
example, could also offer self-servicing tools for customers .”
With self-servicing, customers have the ability to execute
requests and administrative follow-up via the extranet . In
addition, the Duo application has also been opened up on
the internet: Candidates can adapt their profile or their CV
from home . “That is not to say that Randstad or Vedior never
offered such options before, but now it comes from one
architecture and the new applications do offer substantially
more possibilities,” adds Van Harneveldt .
Easily expandable
Of course, it was crucial that IBM could guarantee that
future-oriented vision . According to Van Harneveldt, this
became clear immediately after the merger was announced .
“Sizability became an important argument for opting for
IBM, and that pays off instantly: We simply adapted the two
Power System p570 machines in function of the two large
commercial players that we will be serving now .” After
all, the Duo application will be used by no less than 1,200
Randstad employees and 600 Tempo-Team users involved in
temporary work activities and the service cheques . Specifically,
the changeover to the new application will take place
at Randstad in the spring of 2009, and at Tempo-Team in
the autumn of 2009 .

The strategic choice of IBM was not a
hard one for Randstad and Tempo-Team.
At Randstad, they are very happy with the virtualization
and partitioning possibilities . “You can better balance your
system,” says Van Harneveldt . “When high performance
levels are required, you can handle them flexibly . On the
one hand, you can distribute the power you have nicely
across the machine; on the other hand, you can possibly
activate additional processors . You just have to turn a few
keys from a software point of view .” Randstad already
applied this principle to its System i infrastructure, on
which the back office runs and which was expanded from
4 to 6 processors . And this is also perfectly possible for the
System p infrastructure . “That expansion can even be done
for a specific period,” says Van Harneveldt . “For example,
let’s say you are doing an important commercial campaign,
whereby some temporary users need to use the machine .
In that case, you can rent additional performance for one
month .”
Van Harneveldt also appreciates the clear line in IBM’s
product range . “We called upon IBM Services to size, implement
and prepare the systems for use . Fundamentally, it
is easier today for our internal people to get to know those
new machines – after all, they recognise many components .
They already know the principle of partitioning from System
I for a start . And it is a strong trump card for us that
the technology of System i and System p are evolving in
the same direction . It shows that there is a clear evolution,
towards a unified perspective on the future .”
Case | 17

CASE
Green’ IT is a real challenge for CIOs and IT managers . Worldwide,
increasing numbers of business users are realising
both that automation can have a significant impact on the
environment and that the energy consumption of equipment
and peripheral systems, such as server cooling systems,
represents an increasing portion of a company’s costs . A mounting
number of studies are providing the figures to support
these intuitive conclusions . Analysts from research company
Gartner have calculated that IT energy consumption contributes
2% to global CO emissions . The use of IT equipment is
2
therefore now contributing almost as much to CO emissions
2
as global air traffic, and to worldwide energy consumption
even more than the metals industry . That means that companies
and institutions that take sustainable entrepreneurship
seriously have to look for ways to reduce IT energy consumption
levels and thereby limit the resulting CO emissions .
2
18 | Case
IBM’s own “Project Big Green”
Practice what you preach
Data centers
The rapid increases in the price of electricity make it important
for CIOs to take energy consumption seriously, because
there are immediately measurable benefits to be realised from
implementing environmentally friendly procedures . Traditionally,
many CIOs and IT managers haven’t known how much
power their IT systems consumed, since they rarely have had to
account for electricity consumption in their budgets . But with
the rising costs of energy, a potential demonstrable reduction
of 50% in electricity consumption now suddenly makes ‘green’
IT an interesting subject for discussion .
And there are several further challenges that make the more
efficient organisation of data centers necessary . Not least
among these, the demand for computing power is growing
exponentially, as are the volumes of data that are being stored
by companies and institutions . Yet the development of many
data centers has been more or less static over the past few
years . In many cases, five- and ten-year-old data centers – which
is the majority of them – no longer meet the latest technological
requirements, and most are not taking advantage of the
latest developments in organisation and cooling .
Project Big Green
IBM has implemented this vision of ‘green IT’ itself in its own
business operations with Project Big Green . Every year, funds
of at least $1 billion are devoted to Project Big Green, and a
‘green’ team consisting of 1,000 IBM personnel is now dedicated
to it . The objective of Project Big Green is, first, to develop
‘green’ technologies and services further . Second, IBM uses

Project Big Green to offer its clients a roadmap for dealing with
the energy crisis, while getting the most out of IBM hardware,
software and services . For IBM’s clients, Big Green means that
an average data center using $2 .6 million dollars in electricity
can expect to reduce its electricity costs by half . That is equivalent
to the CO emissions reduction of 1,300 fewer cars on the
2
road .
In 2007, IBM conducted a complete analysis of electricity
consumption in its own data centers, using the findings to
organise them more efficiently . One of the Project Big Green
initiatives that arose from that analysis was the consolidation
of 3,900 servers into 30 mainframes, a move that resulted in an
energy saving of 80% for those servers . Additionally, for every
dollar that was saved on electricity, IBM saved $6 on hardware,
software and administration . The servers that were taken out
of service will be completely recycled .
Conclusion
IBM’s experiences with Project Big Green, both in its own data
centers and in those of its clients, have brought to light some
valuable lessons: In the first place, it’s important not to lose sight
of the fact that this is a long-term project . It takes years rather
than months to change a complete data center . With that in
mind, IBM has learned that it is advisable to schedule changes
in stages . And it is therefore also important to plan changes that
will deliver immediate and visible results in stage one – convincing
people of the benefits and creating financial ‘wiggle room’
for subsequent improvements . When making all the changes,
don’t forget the existing equipment and infrastructure – a
whole host of improvements in effective deployment can often
be achieved there, too .
When implementing new equipment and infrastructure, make
maximum use of the potential efficiency improvements . And
even though the whole process will take place over the long
term, the first results can be obtained quickly . Several simple
measures can result in quick savings of up to 10% . Consolidating
servers and storage will usually create major opportunities . The
first step is: to measure . We recommend that companies that
want to make serious work of ‘green’ IT start by making a comprehensive
study of their energy-consumption profile . On the
basis of those findings, the first steps can be taken on the way to
building a truly ‘green’ data center . n
According to John Post, Technical Leader of IBM
Benelux, “There’s a lot of talk about ‘green’ IT, but
now is the time to do something about it. We know
now that it’s possible. Simple measures deliver
immediate benefits with quick-win savings of 5%
to 10% in costs. And those who really implement it
seriously can save up to 80% on their server parks.
And that’s not limited to a single machine; a ‘green’
data center is more than a ‘green’ server. It’s about
a holistic approach, a whole package of measures.
‘Green’ IT has to be an integral part of all processes,
not a separate process in isolation. When that
approach becomes business-as-usual in a company,
there’s a world of energy to be gained in the data
center.”
Through projects like Big
Green, IBM reduced the CO 2
emissions of its own business
operations by more than
45% worldwide between
1990 and 2007.
Case |
19

20
A ‘green’ kiosk
You’ve seen them around - touchscreens - on the roads into
town, in shelters with town plans, in shops, in public buildings,
at airports and so forth. Those touchscreen kiosks are the
interface between the information provider and the information
seeker. The benefi t to the information seeker is that he doesn’t
have to spend time looking for the information desk and then
stand in a queue. For the information provider the advantage
is that they provide an effi cient way to communicate with a
customer or potential customer who has a question about a
product or a service.
One of the most common implementations of an information kiosk is the
combination of a normal PC with a touchscreen . All the technology is built in to
a pretty looking box and – hey presto – an inexpensive kiosk solution - or is it?
Well, it is true that PCs are inexpensive these days - and powerful . The developer
of the kiosk software sees the power of the PC as being a big advantage but is
it an advantage to the people who have to make the investment? A powerful
PC needs a lot of electricity and kiosks are usually open 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week . However, PCs are not designed for continuous use and, in these days of
rising energy costs, high energy consumption can lead to high operating costs .
Consequently, when making decisions on investing in IT equipment, the issue of
energy costs is being taken into consideration much more than it has in the past .
Reducing energy consumption
IBM has an innovative line of kiosk systems in which the energy consumed in
continuous operation was a key concern in the design . The IBM Anyplace Kiosk
was designed as a ‘green’ kiosk that can run 24 hours a day . Over a three-year
period, the savings on energy consumption alone can exceed the entire cost
of investing in a kiosk based on a normal PC . Another cost benefi t of the IBM
Anyplace kiosk is that this compact unit was designed to be installed in an enduser
environment out of the box - compact, fully ruggedised and with all cable
connections concealed – thereby eliminating the additional cost of a third-party
kiosk shell .
With an IBM Anyplace kiosk, the kiosk operator has a short return-on-investment
period and reduced energy consumption . n

Computers
rather than cameras
Producing a seventy-minute
feature film requires
processing 24 frames per
second – a total of 100,800
frames for the whole film . At an
average rate of 1 .5 minutes per frame,
a single processor would take 5,460
days - just under 15 years, including
weekends and holidays . The creative
use of technology, however, provided
enough computing power to process
the film in two months . Skyline, the
production company, will ultimately
be spending six months on rendering
the film, including a lot of changes
along the way .
Green IT helps with production of Suske & Wiske film
With a budget of € 8.6 million, the 3D animated Dutch-language film The Texas
Rangers with Suske & Wiske, which will be shown in 200 cinemas in Benelux next
year, is one of the most prestigious 3D film projects in Europe. In addition to the two
comic strip heros, IBM technology also has a starring role - as part of the production
process. Without IBM’s innovative solutions, the film would have been much more
expensive to make and the complex post-production would have taken much longer.
The computing power required was
provided by two IBM BladeCenters,
each with ten HS21 bladeservers with
two Intel Quad Core processors apiece .
The bladeservers, in turn, were linked
to an IBM DS3300 storage unit with a
capacity of more than 10TB to store all
the images .
That gave the film makers not only
a huge amount of processing power
but also an efficient, inexpensive and
green solution . Because this capacity
is only needed for six months, Skyline
and its partners CoToon and Lux
Animation have rented the technology
for six months from OnDemand
Rentals, IBM Benelux’s exclusive demo
pool partner . This arrangement means
that the machines are only being paid
for during the actual use of the servers
and storage during the rendering
process .
“With Suske & Wiske, we are delivering
an innovative, high-quality product,”
says Skyline’s Jan Theys . “So we went
looking for an IT supplier that could
deliver to our high requirements . With
the IBM BladeCenters, we could flexibly
increase the rendering capacity that
the animation studios needed . We also
saved on our energy bills and did our
bit for the environment!”
The green component of this project is
represented by energy savings of 37%,
using IBM servers that are optimised
for green IT . With the concentration of
computing power in two bladecenters,
there were additional savings on space,
cooling, cabling and administration . n
Suske & Wiske on Blades | 21

22
ensures
Resilience
continuity
Business
resilience is
a complex
whole
Business resilience is one of the pillars
supporting the new enterprise data center.
In today’s economy, business continuity is a
crucial requirement for any organisation. To
meet that need, it’s not enough simply to install
the right IT. The organisation needs to take the
whole business environment into consideration
– everything from security and procedures
right through to the right deployment of the
right people. Above all, it is vital to think about
continuity now, rather than after a calamity
has occurred.

Werner Slabbaert is a Business Resiliency Consultant at
IBM Global Technology Services . “The importance of
business resilience is that it allows the organisation
to handle changes in the market,” he explains .
These changes, he says, can be either negative (threats and
calamities) or positive (being able to maintain one’s position in
an evolving market more successfully than the competition) .
“The tourist industry is a good example . Last-minute bookings
are on the rise, especially for vacations to sunny destinations .
This means that a large number of people will now make their
bookings over the internet at the same time, mostly in the
evening or over the weekend . So if you haven’t recognised that
change and your booking website is not available at that time
– because of regular maintenance, for example – a lot of your
business will be lost, because the customer will simply switch
to a different site .”
This example neatly illustrates that business resilience is about
much more than just technology . “What matters is what you
want as a company . As a first step, you have to determine your
strategy and vision, because business resilience is not only
about opportunities and threats . It’s also about ensuring that
you become and remain a reliable partner for the market .”
Socially responsible business practices, for example, are also
a part of the complex interplay that is business resilience .
“At IBM, we make sure that all of the suppliers we work with
are reliable partners . Obviously, they need to be dependable
in executing their contracted jobs . But they also need to be
reliable on such matters as sustainable corporate development
and preventing child labour .”
This clearly shows how business resilience has to be viewed
as a holistic entity . A further key element in that mix is the
process layer within the IT environment, in which the business
processes have to be executed reliably . Whether or not the
people involved in these processes are sufficiently qualified or
capable becomes a crucial question in business resilience .
High availability
“Eighty percent of all production disturbances are due to
human error,” explains Slabbaert . “Such an error could
bring down the internet site that people are using to book
their holidays, or vital medical information might be made
suddenly unavailable because a system is down . In healthcare
in particular, such an error could have life-threatening
consequences .” Attempting to ensure high availability with
a technical solution is no guarantee that the process works
as it should . “In reality, we see that the process does work
properly just after it has been implemented, but that it lapses
into unavailability after some time . So it is important that
employees keep following the process as it was intended, and
are aware of what happens if they do not .”
Business resilience is also important in the application
and data environment . High availability is supported by
applications . So, in the example of internet bookings, it is
important to have several servers installed that provide
load balancing, and protect and ensure the integrity of
the essential data . “It’s only here that you really get to the
technical end of it . High-availability applications, such
as hospital applications, must be operational at all times
and so the entire environment needs to be very robust .”
This not only concerns the application itself . The network
equipment and the desktop environment must also be taken
into consideration to achieve end-to-end high availability .
“The whole design needs to be suitable for end-to-end high
availability . Infrastructural issues will also play a crucial role
here, especially in the data center with its non-IT equipment,
such as fans, generators, and cables . What if a critical process
can continue operations for only 30 minutes with a UPS? Or
even worse, what if the organisation doesn’t notice that the
UPS has been activated, because no monitoring has been
installed?” This is exactly why risk management is a top
priority for business resilience .
Threats frequently come from the outside, but they can also
just as often be due to internal matters . “Organisations have
anchored their processes exceedingly well in the applications,
making it extremely difficult for employees to commit fraud .
But by the same token, perpetrating fraud then becomes much
easier for IT administrators . The segregation of duties that is
often implemented at a process level is frequently considered
to be unnecessary at an IT level . But the risk – unauthorised
and undetected access to data – remains the same”
Business Resiliency |
23

The importance
of business resilience
is that it allows the
organisation to handle
changes in the market.
24 | Business Resiliency

Information and storage availability
Business resilience requires the availability of data and systems,
and the assurance that the organisation can continue its activities
under all circumstances – during anything from calamities to
complex mergers . Danny Vandaele, IBM System Storage Product
Leader, specialises in data protection and information availability .
“We store information in a safe manner, allowing it to be re-used in
any form at a later time,” he explains .
IBM offers a broad range of reliable and cost-effective data storage
solutions . In addition to the cost of storage itself, the administrative
cost of data storage is becoming increasingly substantial, so
tape virtualization and data de-duplication are currently popular
solutions that help reduce that cost . Traditionally, data protection
has always been closely linked with tape drives, in which data gets
sequentially stored on magnetic tapes . The biggest advantages with
tapes are not only their low cost per gigabyte, but also their ease of
transportation, durability, expandability and low energy requirements
. The development of tape technology continues unabated
and, with the announcement of the 1 terabyte tape, IBM continues
its long tradition of tape development . One disadvantage of tape can
be the time it takes to access specifi c data . Large quantities of data
can be stored on tape very quickly, but the localisation of smaller
data units for recovery purposes takes a relatively long time . “We
solve this problem by means of tape virtualization, which is in fact
the emulation of tape storage on a disk,” explains Vandaele . “Tape
virtualization reduces the time required for backup procedures as
well, improving the restore time and providing more fl exibility for
data protection processes .”
Through IBM’s acquisition of tape virtualization and data deduplication
specialist Diligent, backup data can be stored longer
and more cost-effectively on disk . “Data de-duplication reduces
the physical disk capacity that is required for storage, ultimately
reducing the cost of storage and administration,” he adds . The
reduced volume can also be an advantage in the event of bandwidth
limitations in the data network . Diligent’s technology allows data
reduction ratios of 25:1 . “And energy savings and a reduction of the
required fl oor space in the data center are the logical consequences
of that .”
A backup process functions by repeatedly storing identical data .
Every day, a copy may be made of partially or even totally unchanged
documents . It even occurs that identical copies of the same
document are stored at several locations . When dealing with
small quantities of data, this is no problem . However, when you’re
working with tens of terabytes, it becomes crucial to look at data
de-duplication . “It is important to remember that a data protection
strategy can utilise any of various data reduction methods,” adds
Vandaele . “Data de-duplication in a tape virtualization solution is by
far the simplest method . But it is important to analyse the organisation’s
data-protection and data-retention requirements thoroughly,
in order to select the best solution for the individual . IBM’s broad
product portfolio is clearly an advantage here .”
The archiving of data is the next step . In general, less than 20
percent of all stored data is actively utilised . Large quantities of
inactive data can be stored more cost-effectively in a separate
archive . By separating active from inactive data in this way, the
pressure on the data protection environment declines . The data
in the archive is, after all, inactive and does not change, which
simplifi es the required protection enormously . A second copy of the
archive is usually more than enough to guarantee availability .
According to Vandaele, tape continues to be the cheapest storage
medium, and this won’t be changed by data de-duplication . Data
that needs to be stored for long periods of time will continue to be
put on tape in the future . This also applies to the growing quantities
of digital media, such as radio, television, and fi lm, where
digital tape solutions are being increasingly used as well . The explosion
of data volumes means that the need for smart data-protection
solutions and cost-effective storage will only increase . Solutions
for tape virtualization, data de-duplication and other modern tape
technologies from IBM are the pillars on which organisations can
build their data protection and retention strategy . n
Business Resiliency |
25

26
Reclaiming
scale
the economies of
Virtualization and consolidation
are both useful and necessary

There is something of a cyclical pattern to the
development of IT infrastructure with the
waves being caused by technologies that have
reached the limit of their possibilities . “Several
years ago, clients who needed their own servers and
storage purchased a lot of partial solutions,” says René
van Duijkeren, Integrated Technology Solutions Manager,
IBM Global Technology Services . One way to look at that
situation is to consider it as a response to the centralised
mainframe approach that prevailed in the ‘60s and ‘70s .
With the arrival of PCs, the decentralised approach
became popular,” he says . “We are now encountering the
disadvantages of that approach, leading to the new trend
that the partial solutions are being reconsolidated to
reclaim the benefits of economies of scale . Those benefits
can be gained in terms of physical size, which is related
to lack of space, energy consumption and capacity . When
you consolidate, you have much less loss because you never
use all of the processing space for each individual machine
and you cannot expect companies to just keep buying
more machines . The basic principles are performance
and availability and that can also be achieved without
continuously adding new servers .”
“Virtualization is necessary to be able to consolidate,” Van
Duijkeren says . “With virtualization, capacity is separate
from the physical box . Users no longer know which server
or storage space your data is being processed on . You don’t
need to know, either! This means that you can optimise the
data center at the bottom without the user on the top being
affected negatively . Users only see the positive effects, with
greatly increased availability and reduced complexity .
Most companies are aware that this is the way that they
should go . The driving force behind that development is
the proliferation in the number of servers and storage
space, driving the costs out of control . You find yourself
in trouble with energy, electricity, cooling and space . The
environmental factors are pushed to their limits . The
investments required to deal with this situation make
virtualization an interesting option and IBM’s Green Data
Center approach is a good solution for achieving that .
It allows you to combine working more effectively with
making better use of your environment .” n
The basic principles
are performance
and availability
and that can also be
achieved without
continuously adding
new servers.
Virtualization / consolidation |
27

More attention
for the business
As product manager of the IBM Power Systems, of course,
I am in a privileged position, because nothing is more
fulfilling than being able to talk about a product that is
regarded by everyone as “the missing link .”
Mere marketing language, you might think . But I would like to
give a few examples as proof:
Scalability
The scalability is not just in the physical structure but also in
performance .
As systems go from one to 64 cores, the performance doubles
every time you double the number of cores . And that performance
is exactly what we need when it comes to consolidation .
Power6 has a number one position for performance in the
market . (Proof of this can be found in the TPC figures listed
on www .tpc .org and on www .spec .org .) That means that when
we consolidate different workloads, we are working with a
system that is truly capable of processing them at a record rate
– whether it is for a database or a java application .
Virtualization
Virtualization leads to flexibility and a reduction of costs .
Here again, we go from 1 to 64 cores – but, by means of micropartitioning,
it is even possible to use 1/10th of a core for a
partition . The advantage of that? The system does not take over
the entire core for an application that only requires 1/10th of
it, so you can consolidate more on one system .
28 | Virtualization / consolidation
Virtualization and consolidation are the most discussed topics in IT, so you would expect
that just about everything has been said about them that can be. Yet still, during demonstrations
of our Power Systems, I often get reactions from people like, “I didn’t know that
was possible as well,” or, “That solves all our problems.” Such responses obviously delight
me because that is why I’m there. But I know that, in my enthusiasm, I then bound across
the stage like a bouncing ball, because I can’t contain myself when I see how those Power
6 chips help so many people achieve what they need to.
Partition and application mobility offer even more flexibility
and also increase availability . With Power6, partitions or
workload partitions in one system can be moved to another
without interrupting the application and/or the end-user .
As a result, when doing maintenance, for example, you
are able to temporarily switch off underused systems and
this can also result in a substantial reduction in the power
costs .
Management
The management of virtualised environments causes new
problems . How do we now monitor and scale different
things? In reality, it is just as simple as it used to be with
the IBM Director and IBM Usage and Accounting Manager
software . Scripts have to be created that either make
underused systems take over tasks from heavily burdened
systems, or join the tasks of multiple underused systems on
one or a few systems . Everything is possible and the only
obstacle is the manager’s own creativity .
Savings
All of this shows what benefits can be realised . Yet many
people still do not know that by implementing virtualization
on Power 6, it is possible to generate huge savings on
the TCO compared to non-virtualised, conventional environments
.
Think about all those systems that consume kilowatts of
power but are only operational for 10% of the time . Think

What is more beautiful
than to reveal a product of
which everybody says it’s
the missing link?
about the energy use of the infrastructure and all those
cables . The proof of what can be achieved with the right
approach can be seen at companies like Volkswagen and
Telefonica, which have each managed to save some 70% on
their TCO by implementing virtualised IBM Power Systems .
Energy
There are already companies that have reached the limits
of their energy use and cannot grow any further as a result .
By implementing virtualization and consolidation, space
for growth can be created again in a very simple way . IBM
itself has achieved enormous savings in this manner via its
Big Green project .
Flexibility
“Flexibility” is too weak a term to express all the adaptive
strengths of a Power6 system that is operating fully
independently . Of course, it does take some getting used to .
It might even, at times, seem a little scary to let a machine
process by itself all those things that would have kept us
busy in the past . (Of course, you can also implement virtualization
step by step – you just need to make sure that
the basis is good and that you also have space for future
growth .) But with Power 6, you are set for many years to
come, safely assured that you can afford to focus on your
business and not have to worry about your IT .
Danny Vandaele
Product Manager Power Systems
Virtualization / consolidation | 29

In practice:
Keep it simple!
Virtualize the IT infrastructure!
Processing capacity
A model IT infrastructure
Low utilisation of available server and storage capacity, high
energy consumption, problems with delivery of requested
server and storage capacity, data recovery that takes days,
recovery from disasters large and small that takes weeks and is
complex . . . and all that with a constant or shrinking IT budget .
Sounds familiar? Can’t it be done any better?
Be able to make faster applications available to the business,
generate test and development systems quickly, achieve better
utilisation of server and disk systems, offer continuous
availability - and all at a lower operating cost . A fairytale? No!
Processing capacity
Traditional Server
Appl. Appl.
Memory Memory capacity capacity
30 | Virtualization / consolidation
Today, virtualization of application servers and disk storage
systems makes this perfectly possible – it’s one of the aspects
of the New Enterprise Data Center . Organisations have a great
need to offer applications faster, ideally on a fl exible and
continually available IT infrastructure and at a lower cost . New
applications are often unpredictable . The resources required,
such as server and storage capacity for the data, are often hard
to evaluate . This results in poor deployment of the available
server and storage capacity and a waste of costly energy . See
illustration 1 .
Traditional Server Traditional Storage
Illustration 1. Traditional use of IT infrastructure components.
Data storage capacity
Data storage capacity
Traditional Storage
Appl. Appl.
Processing capacity capacity

Processing capacity
Consolidation and virtualization techniques address this
inefficiency . Hardware must be better deployed to offer
applications more quickly - but what is consolidation?
Nothing more or less than reducing the number of servers
needed to provide specific functions to just a few or only
one and, with data storage, to reduce the many data storage
facilities to a few or just one disk storage system . How
would you do that? Offer gutsier and more solid servers
Processing capacity
Server Virtualisation
Appl. Appl. A A
Appl. Appl. B B Appl. Appl. D D Appl. Appl. F F
Appl. Appl. C C
Appl. Appl. G G
Appl. Appl. E E Appl. Appl. H H
Illustration 2. The virtualized IT infrastructure.
that can use virtualization to offer many small and large
servers – virtual rather than physical servers - and offer
one data storage system . That way, shared capacity is made
available on the application server and in the data storage
area, which can be used by all applications . This avoids
applications commandeering a (too large) physical server
and the complementary (too large) storage system . For the
virtualized IT infrastructure, see illustration 2 .
Server Virtualization Storage Virtualization
Data storage capacity
Storage Virtualisation
Appl. AAppl.
A
Appl. DAppl. Appl. D GAppl.
G
Appl. BAppl.
BAppl.
EAppl.
E
Appl. CAppl.
CAppl.
FAppl.
F
Memory Memory capacity capacity Processing Processing capacity capacity
The consequences of this approach:
- Better utilisation of servers from 10-20% and up to 70-80% with virtualization
- Better utilisation of data storage facilities and the network
- Lower energy costs so more environmentally friendly
- Lower cost of the mostly over-pressurised administration staff
- Provide server and storage capacity for existing and new applications more quickly
Data storage capacity
Virtualization / consolidation | 31

What about the availability of the applications? All your eggs
in one basket? By using virtualization, very few physical
components are needed . That way, much more attention can
be paid to the robustness of those that remain and if they fail,
applications can be automatically started on the other available
servers . Backup data can possibly be made available on the
same virtual storage system . Disaster-protection is also simple
Illustration 3. High-availability virtualised IT infrastructure.
32 | Virtualization / consolidation
to establish by migrating virtual servers to a second location
where a copy of the data is stored . The virtualised servers at
the second location can be started automatically and take up
the work . See illustration 3 . n
Frans Versteeg
IBM Systems Architect
Server Virtualisation Storage Virtualisation
Server Virtualization Storage Virtualization
Appl. B Appl. D
Appl. C
Appl. B Appl. D
Appl. C
Appl. A
Appl. A
Appl. E
Appl. E
Appl. F
Appl. G
Appl. H
Migration Data Replication
Appl. F
Appl. G
Appl. H
Appl. A
Appl. B
Appl. C
Appl. A
Appl. B
Appl. C
Appl. D Appl. G
Appl. E
Appl. F
Appl. D Appl. G
Appl. E
Appl. F

The virtualized
IT infrastructure
holds the future.
Virtualization / consolidation | 33

34
A new model
for Information
Infrastructure
Storage
re-invented

One of IBM’s most innovative solutions for these
developments is the product line that resulted from
the acquisition of XIV . XIV was taken over by IBM at
the end of December 2007 but the product had already
been invented six years earlier and the first systems went into
production in Israel three years ago . Moshe Yanai, the founder
and CEO of XIV, already had many years of experience with
storage issues as the CTO of EMC . At EMC, he had been closely
involved with a host of storage-related innovations but he takes
sole credit for the most innovative solution of all with the
development of the XIV technology .
XIV is now fully operational within IBM and the second
generation of the product has just been announced . The
first roll-out will take place in the Benelux, the worldwide
roll-out will follow . “The principle behind XIV is storage
reinvented and that is what happened,” says Bas Broekarts,
Benelux manager for the XIV product line . “It really is a
disruptive technology that is truly different to everything
else on the market . The XIV storage technology is based on
a GRID network architecture . Although it may seem like a
contradiction in terms, what makes the system unique is
that it uses standard components . As a result, we can quickly
implement all kinds of new technologies as soon as they as
available .”
The XIV storage solution fits seamlessly into the vision of the
NEDC in such things as energy efficiency and green storage .
“We use large disks,” Broekarts says, “so we can deliver the
performance and reliability of high-end drives . As a result,
we can save up to 80% of electricity and cooling costs by
comparison with other solutions .”
This technology was built from the ground up with
‘virtualization’ always at the back of our minds . With
virtualization, we can optimise the usage rate for storage
systems significantly . In the past, storage systems were only
able to handle a maximum usage rate of between 30% and 50%
and that was only possible with very intense administration
procedures .
The administration of the XIV systems is child’s play by
comparison . To administer and manager 10TB using current
systems, you need three people to do it . With XIV, a single
person is quite enough . That gives you a lot of savings in terms
of personnel and administration .”
All of the benefits
“It also has all of the benefits that the current generation
of storage systems have but without the additional costs
that are part and parcel of the other systems . Normally, for
example, you would have to pay extra for such things as thin
provisioning, snapshots and remote replication . All of that is
standard in XIV .”
To achieve those improvements, the XIV product line uses 1TB
SATA drives . In conjunction with how the system operates,
primarily due to the intelligent software - that leads to levels
of availability and performance that are normally only found
in systems with lower-capacity Fibre Channel drives . Those
large drives use no more electricity than lower capacity drives,
which can lead to substantial savings on electricity costs,
especially in large companies .
“We have found that companies need green data centers,”
Broekarts says, adding that that requirement is often the result
of a shortage of electrical and cooling capacity . When they
start designing their new calculation center, we see that they
want to do everything right the first time All of our enterprise
clients quite naturally want to have a guarantee of stable
performance . Normally, that requires a lot of hard work on the
part of the storage administrators . However, with our systems
that is automatic and it continues to be transparent for the
people who are administrating the systems . XIV is also perfect
when companies are implementing virtual servers . Power
consumption and virtualization are particularly important
core concepts . XIV is quite simply a very innovative design
that is different in very many key ways from all of the other
available solutions .” n
Information Infrastructure |
35

36
Must haves
built on IBM Technology!

3. IBM Race car
USB memory stick
1. XBox 360, Playstation 3
and the Nintendo Wii
2. Mars Rover
4. Tux cuddly
1. XBox 360, Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. . IBM has developed multi-core processors for the XBox 360, Playstation
3 and the Nintendo Wii, substantially improving the graphic capacities and speed of the games consoles. The Playstation 3 processor is at
the heart of the Sony Playstation 3 and has been developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. Thanks to the multi-core microprocessor (9 cores),
the Playstation 3 is 10 times faster than the fastest home computer and has 50 times better graphics. Nintendo Wii: For the standard
microprocessor in the Wii, the design of the Nintendo Game Cube’s “Gekko”has been used. The Wii uses 20% less power and has better
performance. By using this processor in the Wii, IBM has integrated the game consoles technology into all three. 2. Mars Rover. The Mars
Rovers use microprocessors based on IBM Power Architectur. On Mars, IBM has a 100% market share for the Power Architecture processors
– in the satellites circling around the planet, in the Rovers and in the Marsrover Phoenix. 3. IBM Race Car 2GB USB flash stick.
A new IBM give-away distributed during the IBM Information Infrastructure announcement in Montpellier on 8 September 2008. 4. Tux
cuddly. Tux, the cuddly Linux penguin in an IBM jacket – a symbol of our commitment to open-source software.
Must haves | 37

Step back
from the
hardware
38
En route to the ideal world
with IT Optimisation
It takes a well-organised IT infrastructure to
do what it’s intended to do; namely, to provide
optimal support for the business. However, the
variety of systems that have been installed in
most large companies over the years are far from
achieving their intended objective. To improve that
situation, an IT optimisation process is required
with a clear plan consisting of clear and feasible
steps to achieve an IT structure that provides
optimal support.

IT Optimisation (ITO) is the methodology envisioned by IBM
to move from sub-optimal to optimal IT . “The question then
becomes one of ‘what is optimal and what is sub-optimal,”
says Hilmi Erdem, ITO Sales Consultant . “We know that the
IT managers and CIOs in all organisations are facing challenges
- at the very least things that could actually be done better and
every organisation has an ideal for what IT should be able to do to
provide optimal support to the business .
“In an IT Optimisation programme, we therefore always first
make an assessment of the current situation and, together with
the client, we develop a picture of the ideal future situation and,
equally important, map out the steps that need to be taken to
achieve it . The promise of ITO is the creation of a paved road to
the destination, with every project milestone bringing you one
step closer to your goal .”
In this approach, ITO is closely linked with the NEDC . The New
Enterprise Data Center is IBM’s guiding vision of IT infrastructure,
while ITO is the practical implementation that brings the
route into the real world . Hilmi Erdem says, “We have a lot of
technical building blocks, from Blades to Mainframes and from
Operating Systems to Middleware . All of those building blocks
are part of the NEDC and ITO is how we bring that technology
into play in the right way and at the right time . Timing is
important because there is a crucial change process involved . In
addition to technology, you also have to put a lot of thought into
the organisation and processes . ITO supports the implementation
of the NEDC .
“The NEDC is the link between all of the pieces of the puzzle .
It is a vision of the total approach . It makes it possible to take a
holistic approach to IT for
the data centers and to take
Applications
that to the CIO . When you
and Data
do that, you are actually on
Computing
the client’s side - not just a
Systems and
Storage
salesperson with a product
Strategic
to sell .”
Alignment
Ludwig Van den bergh, IBM
Technical Director STG
Process
Benelux, expounds further:
“During ITO, every problem
Finance and
area in the roadmap is exa-
Environment
mined closely from several
angles . If you only look at it from the perspective of technology
then you get into the situation that the elegant solution you have
devised doesn’t work well if it hasn’t been aligned with your orga-
nisation and processes . The right balance has to be struck in all
areas and the right time selected to implement the changes .”
“This methodology has been perfected over the past few years,”
says Erdem, “and NEDC gave it a huge boost . The worldwide community
of approx . 1,600 experts exchange their experiences with
each other, which also helps the ITO methodology to improve
further . That way, you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel .”
CEO versus CIO
IT Optimisation gives CIOs a way to communicate with the CEO,
in business terms, the fact that IT really does support the business
goals . “A lot of companies start an ITO process because they want
to reduce costs and simplify the infrastructure,” Erdem says “and
those things continue to be important . However, it goes much
farther than that . For the CIO, cost-reduction and manageability
are not the be all and end all . The plea from the business is simple
- enable me! Be flexible and help me reduce my time-to-market for
new products .”
Ludwig Van den bergh notes that “one of the most important
steps in the preliminary stages of the ITO is determining what
kind of IT you actually need . Are you looking for a commodity at
the lowest price or should IT be a business enabler? The role that
you envision for IT will determine your requirements . Once you
know that, you can figure out what is and what is not important
and set the priorities for the next 24 months . That is short enough
to be able to project to the end and long enough to implement
that transformation .”
Service Management is essential for the implementation of
ITO . “You can make a bigger impact by looking at your service
management,” according to Erdem . “A lot of manual processes
can be automated; such as
building up standard testing
and development environments
or the creation of user
Network accounts and passwords . The
people who do that now can
then be put to work doing
things that are more innova-
Organization tive than such simple tasks .
“If you then look at service
management at a higher
level, you arrive at the
business level and you start
looking at regulating capacity . The huge diversity in systems has
an equally huge impact on management costs . After a while, the
average large company no longer has any idea how the applica-
Service Management | 39

tions are structured . They have to find out and then disentangle
them and set them up in such a way that a service-oriented
architecture (SOA) is created . Everybody knows that of course - in
theory - but how do you do it? ITO includes some automated ways
of making an inventory by scanning and reading infrastructure .”
Monoliths and methodologies
“We once had a client who had so many servers in the basement
that nobody had any idea what the servers were being used for .
The only way they could find out what was running on the servers
was to turn them off one at a time and then to see who called
the helpdesk . When some of the servers were turned off, nobody
called .”
“The old IT silos are quite often technical monoliths that block
improvements to IT,” Van den bergh says, “We encounter those
problems in both large and small companies, so the ways to make
IT more efficient can also be used in large and small companies .”
That’s why asset management – where records are kept of where
the machines are and what they do - is essential . “You would
think that every company would know what it has installed,” says
Erdem . “In fact, the opposite is the case, so you have to start at a
very low level to get a good idea of what’s there . That may seem
like the most obvious thing in the world but in practice, it’s still
the first link in the chain and we have a large repertoire of instruments
to do that, from assessments to quick scans .”
Using IT Optimisation as a methodology for implementing the
NEDC gives structure to the instruments and methodologies;
methodologies that include Component Business Modelling (CBM)
and Component Infrastructure Roadmap (CIR) . “It always starts
with the business strategy,” says Van den bergh . “That’s what we
have CBM for; to determine the strategy and to see what becomes
core and what doesn’t . One level below that, the IT department
also has a strategy . To find out what that is, we can use a variation
of CBM – ‘CBM for the business of IT’ . CBM is intended for the use
of the CEO while ‘CBM for the business of IT’ is for the CIO .
“That strategy is the prerequisite for developing a good roadmap
for the IT infrastructure . CIR actually comprises all of IBM’s
expertise brought together in a tool that can be used to answer
a number of questions about where you are now, where you’re
going and the difference between them - all of that on the basis of
information the client already has . The result is a maturity assessment
. The difference results in the roadmap, which is translated
in turn into individual projects . NEDC, as a whole, is not just a
hardware solution but a hardware solution in conjunction with a
structured project-oriented approach . n
40 | Service Management

NEDC and SOA
A company’s decision-making processes are directly impacted
by considerations about the environment and sustainable
entrepreneurship . This applies both at business level (e .g ., when
developing new products and services) as well as in the field of IT
investments (e .g ., in the purchase of IT components, the layout of
the computing centre and the selection of suppliers) .
It does not require a lot of imagination to see that a company
using fewer resources will operate more efficiently than one with
a more wasteful approach . And that includes not only the use
of natural resources but also of processes, systems, people and
materials in general . The better a company is automated and its
business processes are optimised, the more efficiently it will be
able to operate .
According to IBM, two issues play an important role in enabling
a company or institution to operate more efficiently . First and
foremost is the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) . Some of
the primary goals of a Service-Oriented Architecture, after all,
are to enhance efficiency and allow organisations to respond
rapidly to changing circumstances . It does that by switching
them from thinking in terms of vertical integration to horizontal
integration; and from modules and platform-specific applications
to services and a physical infrastructure that is able to mould
itself dynamically to software requirements .
And it is this dynamic infrastructure that brings us to the second
aspect – NEDC or the New Enterprise Data Center .
The components or services defined in an SOA environment
must, in principle, be capable of running on a fully virtualised IT
infrastructure, and that is precisely what is achieved with NEDC .
NEDC makes it possible to offer Information Technology – the
symphony of servers, storage and network – as a resource to the
software department requesting it, in a fully service-oriented
manner . This is made feasible by separating the IT’s physical
infrastructure from its services by means of virtualisation . This
goes way beyond the traditional server or storage consolidation .
It in fact means a virtualisation of the data centre – creating
an infrastructure that can react quite responsively to the everfluctuating
requirements and goals of an organisation .
In this way, NEDC and SOA go hand in hand in making businesses
more efficient and, as a consequence, greener . You can read more
about how this is achieved elsewhere in this magazine . n
Service Management | 41

We bring your technology alive
What ‘s keeping IT Executives & Data Center Managers awake at night, and how virtualization techniques, from Mainframe to Desktop, can
help deliver on the core business drivers… that’s what I.R.I.S. ICT is all about… These new technology imperatives and challenges that will
shape next generation computing infrastructures is our core mission.
New technologies o� er smaller and more powerful servers and disk subsystems, the right � t for optimal consolidation and virtualisation,
the way to drastically reduce your total cost of ownership and help our world to preserve our environment by lowering electrical power
and cooling.
Our consolidation and virtualization open solutions support most of server and storage environments, and as experts in the virtualization
� eld we walk even one step beyond in the announcement of our own IRIS Virtual desktop solution (own innovative technology), where
we bring server and datacenter advantages, combined with an almost zero tolerance power consumption to the desktop, keeping your
traditional personal computing experience untouched.
I.R.I.S. Virtual Desktop
Bring Power to your desktop
With I.R.I.S. Virtual Desktop, enterprise organizations
achieve:
Low Power Consumption: Compared to a traditional PC,
our soluton is designed with the environment in mind.
Reduce your yearly desktop Power Consumption bill up
to 90%.
Improved performance: Compared to a traditional PC,
IRIS Virtual desktop leverages server-grade hardware.
Launching Microsoft O� ce has never been so fast.
Improved uptime: Compared to a traditional PC,
IRIS Virtual Desktop can help you improve business
continuity by leveraging the ability to move running
desktops from one physical server to another.
Improved device connectivity: Compared to traditional
thin client solutions, IRIS Virtual Desktop allows for
connecting most USB devices available on the market.
Multi-Monitor support: IRIS Virtual desktop allows to
connect multiple monitors to the same virtual desktop.
Much more!
We would be happy to demo I.R.I.S. Virtual Desktop to
your company. Contact us for a free appointment.
Organize your desktops now!
T080915-01
I.R.I.S. ICT NV/SA
Mechelse steenweg 542
B-1800 Vilvoorde
Tel: +32-(0)2 251 66 50
Fax: +32-(0)2 252 57 55
virtual.desktop@irislink.com
www.iris-ict.eu

Innovation
is the key
to success
The IBM Systems and Technology Executive Briefing Centers in La
Gaude and Montpellier in France offer benchmarking services, testing
facilities for your systems and services to improve architecture solutions
using the latest IBM hardware and software. The Forum in La Gaude is
also a development center for industry-specific solutions.
IBM European Business Solutions Center - La Gaude (France)
IBM PSSC Customer Center – Montpellier (France)
IBM Briefing Centers | 43

A look
IT
into
the future of
44 | Technology update
Technology update
As hardware development progresses at high
speed, IBM continues carrying out research into
the applicability and impact of new discoveries,
as well as into the direction of already existing
innovations. The results of this research are
published in IBM’s Global Technology Outlook.
Although the publication covers more topics
than IT alone, the fundamental research that
is described in Global Technology Outlook will
ultimately have a huge impact on hardware
development.

We are approaching the limits of our capacity .
Although we haven’t reached the limits of Moore’s
Law in an absolute sense yet, we have in terms of
current technology”, said Dirk Harryvan, Senior IT
Specialist, whose main interest is hardware-related innovation
. “We can’t make the chips much smaller than we do
now . Today’s chips are made with 60 nanometre technology .
That’s only three hundred atoms . Removing more elements
would leave us with building blocks only a couple of atoms
thick .” (see box) The trend that saw all IT components constantly
getting smaller seems to have come to an end . “So we
set out in a different direction, not using higher frequencies
but developing multi-core computing . That is a quite an
important development because the multi-core approach
makes different demands on the software .”
Hybrid computing
One of the technical paths being explored leads to massively
multi-threaded computing, requiring a different technological
approach . “Right now, we are accustomed to thinking in
terms of one, two or four-core systems but looking at things
from the perspective of program threads, we reach more
than 100 threads per socket relatively quickly . However, the
cores are no longer easily defi ned . That is how hybrid computing
works .”
“We are used to thinking symmetrically, in frequencies . In
the future, however, we will have processor elements that
run at high speed and processor elements that are taskoptimised
. This approach is comparable to using today’s
generation of graphics cards . The technology itself - cards
with embedded intelligence - already exists . We are going to
use it to go to a central processor that is made up of dozens
of components, all of which do different things . That way,
the processors will be much more cleverly structured .”
Hybrid computing technology is already being used in
gaming consoles today .
Evidently, the software will have to be able to deal with the
new hardware . “We are used to linear programming . True
parallel programming is a completely different story, being
the exclusive domain of high-performance computing today .
Software has traditionally been linear, even though there
are all kinds of tasks that could be run in parallel . If you
If we don’t apply
a lot of innovation,
the chips will become
slower again.
Technology update | 45

want to count all of the letters in a book,
for example, you could do that with a
simple counter but you could also break
the task down by page . That is working in
parallel .”
3D technology
One of the most important
limitations in developing
new hardware is the fact that
technology will be stuck with
silicon for a while yet . No single
technology has proven to
be able to replace silicon . Dirk
Harryvan says, “It will take
at least another ten years for
that to happen but there’s a lot
we can do in the meantime to
improve silicon . A lot of effort
is being put into 3D technology
. The stacking of chips is
one way to resolve the current
building problem we encounter
with chips . Today, chips
have only one storey, with a lot
of wiring between the elements getting
in the way . Those wires take up space, use
power and generate heat . Stacking them
by using 3D technology allows us to build
shorter connections . You have to adjust
the cooling system, though . This kind
of technology is still in the development
stages but we are moving inevitably to
an environment of stacked chips making
up complete systems with much more
efficiency than we have today .”
Cooling these new systems is the next
challenge . “There is a lot of interest
for direct liquid cooling . That does not
mean that we provide cooling water for
the whole data center right away . On the
other hand, liquid cooling is an alter-
native and efficient method for cooling
chips quickly . The technology is already
being used in chip coolers in a limited
way . These have liquid conduits that run
over the surface of the chip, in order
to cool it immediately . That strongly
enhances the cooling capacity .”
The new cooling approach
leads to new opportunities .
“The cooling process raises the
temperature of the cooling
water so there is an opportunity
to re-use that heat
in another way . If the water
pumped into the data center
was only raised to a temperature
of 20 degrees, there would
not be much of an opportunity .
However, if you were to get
water at 60 degrees, you could
actually do something with
it . A data center uses a lot of
electricity but if you could
use the heat generated by that
electricity, you would get a totally different
energy balance . You may be able to
cancel out the CO emissions because the
2
data center acts as a kind of hot water
boiler . The result would then be a zero
emission data center .”
Downsizing - the limit has not been reached
Thanks to continuous innovation, the
downsizing of IT components hasn’t quite
come to a total stop yet . Dirk Harryvan
says, “Ultimately, 22 nanometre technology
will become reality . That’s really small,
indeed . IBM is one of the few companies
that is still able to work on that . The
complicating factor is the resolution
capacity of light . Light has a relatively high
wavelength . UV technology and lasers have
a wavelength of 140 or 180 nanometres .
That is beneath the resolution capacity
46
| Technology update
of light . Given the laws of physics, that’s
impossible . A solution still needs to be
found .”
That’s why chips are illuminated in liquids
with a high refractive index . “Special
lenses are also useful here but they haven’t
brought us to 22 nanometres yet . To achieve
that, we’ll have to double the illumination .
The traditional method of illumination
is simple, with shadow and light . Now we
are working with an interference pattern
on the edge of the shadow . With double
illumination, we get interference patterns
that reinforce each other .”
The objects will have to become simpler
as well, because it’s impossible to build
all objects with interference patterns .
This simplification will be reflected in
the design criterion and in the use of new
materials . “If an element isn’t radioactive,
we can use it . Obviously, the list of players
gets shorter when you get to this level, as
you lose everyone who is not able to work
with all of those materials .” n

‘Starting Innovations’
Extreme Blue is really starting something big . It’s IBM’s
worldwide premier internship for top students pursuing
technical as well as business degrees . Over a period of twelve
weeks, students work on a challenge to create an innovative
solution for one of IBM’s clients, supported by experienced IBM
mentors .
In its second year in Belgium, four students took up the challenge .
After a week of brainstorming they came up with lots of ideas .
Together with the client, the list was narrowed down to one final
item . Once the best idea was selected, the students created a proof
of concept as well as a business case that was presented to IBM
management, the client and the international press .
Extreme Blue is truly an exciting summer event filled with
innovation, hard work and lots of fun . n
Program Manager
Yorick Cool
Project Manager
Jan Van de Poel
Students
Jean-Luc Deprez
Iñigo de Pedro Amatria
Mindaugas Kaziulis
Pablo Sanchez Sanchez
Extreme Blue | 47

CASE
48 | Case
Business & IT - Twin Data Center
With IBM, economy airline transavia.com chose for the lowest TCO
transavia.com has been a familiar player in the Dutch airline industry for more than 40 years. With its
base at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, the company transports more than 5 million passengers per year to
destinations in Europe and Africa. More than 95% of the carrier’s tickets are sold via the transavia.com
website. With 1.5 million unique visitors per month, the site is the largest internet shop in the Netherlands
in terms of sales. Indeed, the transavia.com website has become so important to the company that it
has made it an official part of the company’s operating name. This dependence on IT at transavia.com
has now led to the establishment of a Twin Data Center with IBM technology.

Over the past year, transavia .com has comprehensively
reorganised its IT . This was a necessary move after IT
had become the company’s main strategic corporate
instrument for cost management, efficiency
improvements and the development of new, innovative services
and products . It also reflects how the company is constantly
investing in new infrastructure, new applications and other
innovations .
transavia .com has been profitable for more than 30 consecutive
years . That’s an impressive performance for a low-cost airline .
According to Gerard Geurtjens, VP of IT for transavia .com, that
has everything to do with its low-cost mentality . “One of the
reasons we changed into a dot-com company was because it
was less expensive,” Geurtjens explains . “But in addition, that
migration from airline to dot-com was also being driven by the
rapid changes in the industry . The travel sector is a leading user
of computerised technologies . Consumers increasingly have
a few websites that they regularly return to when booking a
journey, with the website’s ease-of-use and special offers being
the crucial differentiating factors . So transavia .com changed
from being an airline to becoming a digital travel brand, and
offering new services all the time on the website means we’ve
had to move to a completely different business model .” Dot-coms
have a completely unique dynamic, according to Tjero R . Zomer,
transavia .com’s CFO . “If a dot-com’s website is down, the shop is
closed, nothing is being sold, and the consumer goes to the competition
. That is one change over the last few years that has gone
right to the fundamentals of the business . IT itself has become a
business driver by making innovation possible and helping us to
stay ahead of the competition!”
Digital processes
Having a reliable IT environment is therefore a sink-or-swim
matter for transavia .com . That was reason enough for the
Imtech ICT Brocom B.V. Profile
Imtech ICT Brocom provides business clients with innovative
infrastructural IT solutions and administration services to
provide long-term improvements in IT infrastructure, so
they can be more focused on setting up and changing their
business processes .
company, along with IBM and Imtech ICT Brocom, to start
a project to strengthen its IT operations department and to
duplicate the computerised process via a Twin Data Center
based on IBM technology – a project that has now been completed
successfully . “For transavia .com, the move to a Twin
Data Center was necessary because we found ourselves in a
situation where a significant amount of the IT infrastructure
had not yet been implemented redundantly,” Geurtjens
says . “In both the operational and commercial parts of the
company, we are literally totally dependent on IT: When our
system doesn’t work, the airplanes don’t fly, the crews cannot
be scheduled, passenger data cannot be processed, and our
website is offline .” With the Twin Data Center, the most crucial
operational applications are implemented redundantly,
so operations can continue as normal if one data center isn’t
working properly . In a terribly difficult low-cost carrier market,
it is crucial for transavia .com to look at its investments
very closely . “Three years ago, we made other risk assessments,”
Geurtjens says . “Although several crucial applications
had been implemented redundantly, many applications had
not been . We were working with a number of small servers
connected via RAID controllers, so they could each use some
of one another’s drive space, but that was a much more vulnerable
approach than what we have today . Low cost always
has to lead to high quality, so IBM and Imtech ICT Brocom
came to us with the best proposal for setting up our new
Twin Data Center with IBM technology .
“The no . 1 challenge for transavia .com is to achieve maximum
utilisation of our IT infrastructure,” Geurtjens adds .
“The Twin Data Center and our IBM System i-systems are the
basis for achieving that . We now have a good, solid hardware
and application infrastructure, and that is ultimately the
basis for everything!” n
Imtech ICT Brocom B .V .
Terminalweg 32
3821 AJ Amersfoort
Tel .: (033) 450 04 50
www .imtechictbrocom .nl
Case | 49

Corismo
St. Jobsesteenweg 102
B-2930 Brasschaat
Tel. 03 545 09 00
Fax. 03 545 09 09
info@corismo.be
www.corismo.be
DIOS
IT infrastructure is getting more and more complex due to an increasing demand
for resources. As a result of this evolution an adjusted and � exible policy about the
IT infrastructure is a must!
Corismo has developed a Datacenter Infrastructure Optimization Service (DIOS)
which will help you to evaluate and optimize your current IT infrasctructure.
Simpli� cation of the infrastructure is the � rst logical step towards a standardized,
cost-e� cient and reliable environment. Simpli� cation can be obtained by
consolidation of physical resources to:
• Reduce the complexity of the operations
• Optimize the use of resources
• Simplify the monitoring and management
Virtualization is another big step towards the simpli� cation of an IT environment.
Results of virtualization are:
• Optimization of the load and use of the infrastructure
• Consolidation of workloads on less and better manageable servers
The DIOS Service of Corismo will assist you to simplify your IT infrastructure by:
• Analysing your current IT infrastructure
• Evaluating the di� erent options and helping to de� ne the requirements for
the optimization of your platforms
• Providing you with the results of the current infrastructure and a detailed
proposal of an optimized environment
DIOS Express is the Corismo DIOS o� ering speci� cally tailored for the SMB market.
Contact us today for more info, by calling +32 (0)3 545 09 00, or visit our website,
www.corismo.be
Corismo was founded on the idea that Information Technology for business is very
much like legal advice, accounting and other bodies of knowledge, in that it is not a
do-it-yourself prospect.
In order to respond to the needs of our customers we have evolved from an infrastructure
partner with a vision into an added value infrastructure partner with a strong focus on
infrastructure related services.
Corismo is a supplier of Information Technology with a focus on solution design,
integration and tuning. In addition to this Corismo also o� ers the next step by helping
you to manage your IT infrastructure or by managing it for you.
Managing your IT infrastructure is our core business.
TM
Connection Broker
Direct Access to Hosted Desktops
Direct access via Web Browsers, Fat Clients, or Thin Clients to
remote Microsoft ® Windows ® (2000, XP, or Vista ® ) or Linux ®
desktops running on physical or virtual hosts – removing the
possibility of any single point of failure.
Single Sign-On
Automatic log in to the remote Windows session when using
RDP, VNC, or Teradici PC-over-IP remote viewer protocols.
Eliminates the need to re-enter passwords, ensuring a smooth
Detailed Product Features
Free full-function trial
leostream.com/trial
sales@leostream.com
1 800 503 0133
�������������������������������������������
������������
Hosted Desktop Provisioning
Provides automated virtual machine creation from templates and
integration with 3rd-party provisioning tools. Features include
threshold-based Hosted Desktop creation and deletion based on
configurable upper and lower limits, reducing required storage
resources.
Hosted Desktop Pooling
Built around the concept of cascading resource pools, groups
of similar Hosted Desktops can be assigned to users for a pre-
� �

Talking about processors
Paul Saffo is famous for a lot of quotes. This one’s my favourite: “Most technologies take twenty
years to become an overnight success”. Does this quote relate to processor technology as well?
Today, processors are at the core of every single IT component. Their impact on our daily life is
simply astonishing. Processors have evolved enormously since the early days, when they were
huge, unstable, expensive and hardly of any commercial use.
Nowadays, IBM installs processors in
supercomputers that can execute one
petafl ops: one thousand trillion fl oating
point operations per second . The six
billion people on the earth, each working
a handheld calculator at the rate of one
second per calculation, would need more
than 46 years to do what this system can
do in one day . These systems can calculate
cause and effect in capital markets in realtime
. They render complex 3-D images of
tissue and bone structures in real-time,
during the examination of a patient .
The supercomputer uses generally
available commercial parts . It capitalises
on IBM’s long tradition of R&D in processor
technology, and of building systems that
deliver true value . These products are
available in a wide range of deliverables,
built to perform specifi c tasks with
the same effi ciency and reliability – as
embedded technology in gaming consoles,
cars, ships, planes, medical equipment
and even space rockets . As a matter of fact,
IBM has a 100% market share in processors
being used on Mars .
It is not our R&D’s main target to focus only
on the huge numbers of raw performance .
Even though many businesses benefi t
from complex simulation and modelling
exercises that are very well-suited to run on
these supercomputers, the system’s main
requirements are reliability, sustainability,
and effi ciency . It’s not just about raw speed .
Yet it’s still a fact that we can make these
supercomputers, thereby leading the pack
in the area of supercomputing .
Over the years, IBM’s processor technology
has set standards in many areas .
Applications for the fi rst S/360 back in the
1960s, or for the S/38 in the 1980s, still run
on current processor technology without
any code changes, and with the same
stability and predictability . Investment in
these applications continues to deliver value
for our customers’ businesses .
IBM offers processor technology that detects
and fi xes its own hardware problems .
For dependability and availability, the
design of the IBM processor architecture
relies on several technologies, allowing
you to transparently substitute a working
processor for one that is suspected of
being defective . The technology detects
corruption or faulty results and will
re-execute its task until a correct result has
been achieved, copying state information
from the failing CPU to the spare without
any disruption for the application . If the
problem cannot be fi xed on the same
processor, the system will automatically
start using a different processor available
on the server . At that time, the system with
the failing component will automatically
report the problem to the IBM service
desk . This technology has been available
for many years on IBM’s mainframe and it
provides an unmatched level of reliability
for our customers’ businesses .
Processors all run at different speeds . The
architecture defi nes the capacity they can
deliver . Equally, all processors wait at the
same speed . Therefore, it is important to
make good use of every single processor
cycle to enhance its performance capability .
Only this will make sure that a processor
can achieve high levels of utilisation .
Performance capability enhancement can
be achieved through different techniques,
such as threading, massive parallelism, and
using specialised processors .
Remember, however, that any additional
technology you put into the system
increases the importance of its design .
As a result, you need more research and
development to fully instrument all of
the capabilities in the base technology .
You have to make sure that the roadmap
of your processor does not impact the
operating system, the middleware, or the
applications that are running on it . IBM’s
processor roadmap takes this into account
throughout the entire system lifecycle .
How was IBM able to make this type of
technology, combining hardware with
the technology we use to create operating
systems and software? Simply by listening
to customers and understanding their
businesses and business environments .
Of course, we make sure that a processor
can run at any given clock speed, with any
given number of cores, and with any given
degree of symmetry or parallelism . But for
IBM, that’s just where it all starts . n
Jos Vermaere
IBM Systems Architect & Executive IT Specialist
Column | 51

Dr . Watson was a Mormon with a
simple mantra - Think! That is
also, by the way, the only reason
that the PC products that IBM
progressive way of looking at technology
was very important . IBM is a technology
company, full stop . More than two-thirds
of the IBM population has a technical
anything about our products . Day in
and day out, that group is busy making
groundbreaking inventions . Not without
success - for 15 years in succession IBM
made before the line was
has patented far and away
sold to Lenovo, all contained
the word ‘Think’ You can make wild ducks tame but you can
more inventions than
anyone else and, if you
(ThinkPad, ThinkVision,
ThinkCenter, etc .) . He was a never make tame ducks wild again. One
calculate that there are
200 working days in a year,
man of passion with a strong
social conscience . Today, might also add that the duck who is tamed
that’s 15 patents per day or
2 for every working hour .
everybody’s talking about
Corporate Social Responsi- will never go anywhere any more. We are con-
So, by the time you’ve finished
reading this column,
bility . Dr . Watson was doing
that decades ago . Women, vinced that any business needs its wild ducks
there’s a better than even
chance that an IBM inven-
the handicapped, minorities,
there was a place for and, in IBM, we try not to tame them.
tion has been patented!
While most of those inven-
all of them at IBM . As early
tions might as well be
as 1935, IBM was training a
Dr. Watson Jr., the son and successor of Watson Sr. (1963)
from Mars as far as most
class of women professionals,
people are concerned, I
not for ‘light administrative work’ but background . That’s more than 200,000 want to mention a couple that are part
for headline-grabbing jobs too, in Sales, technical people from all kinds of disci- of our everyday lives and that saw the
Marketing, etc . That class produced the plines - database specialists, WebSphere, light of day in the IBM labs . IBM shares
company’s first woman Vice President - systems and so on and so on .
the patents on bar codes and RFID . Eye
Ruth Leeche, in 1943 .
IBM Research is one of IBM’s less known laser treatments also came from the IBM
What Dr . Watson gave to IBM would take divisions . The department is the working lab, not as a piece of equipment per se but
volumes to tell, a single column is simply home for approximately 3,000 people as the underlying technology . While the
not enough . For me, a technician, his doing basic research . They don’t know rest of the world was busy trying to get
52 | Column
Can IT
be a bit more?
When most people think of IBM, it’s usually the hardware and other products and,
maybe, the services that come to mind. After all, more than half of our revenue comes
from services. However, IBM is more than just services and products. Just look
back to our beginnings. IBM is a 119 year-old company! Of course, in 1889 we were
known as Computing Tabulating Recording Company and our logo only looked good
in wrought iron. In 1924, Dr. Watson Sr. introduced the name International Business
Machines, now a worldwide brand and better known as IBM.

as much energy as possible out of a laser, IBM was busy trying to
find out just how low the energy level could go . To illustrate just
how low ‘low’ was, the word IBM was burned into a human hair
- twice . True, having a hair with ‘IBM’ lasered into it twice is not
something that’s of much use in normal life but an eye surgeon
saw the potential and developed the eye laser on the basis of it .
Even more fundamental discoveries from the IBM labs have led
to 5 Nobel Prizes! Even apart from the technological gymnastics
that we get out of it, it also shows just how well we understand
the material . After all, you don’t get a Nobel Prize for inventing
a new computer or a new kind of ink . You get it for groundbreaking
work . The Nobel Prizes that the IBM people earned were
for super-conduction at room temperature, the ‘tunnelling
effect’ in semi-conductors and, the most groundbreaking - the
Scanning Tunnelling Microscope, which makes it possible to
make individual atoms ‘visible’ and then to move them around .
That led to the creation of the completely new nanotechnology
industry .
Now let’s bring things a little closer to home . Much of what
comes out of IBM Research has to earn its keep in commercial
products . I want to talk about one in particular a little more
- copper . Since the 1960s, it was clear that the increase in the
number of transistors on computer chips would lead to greater
problems in the conduction between the transistors . One
annoying feature of the connections on a chip (made of silicon)
is that copper just won’t stick so aluminium is used but that has
a higher resistance, so it takes more power to achieve the same
result . IBM Research spent 27 years (!) on attempts to get copper
to stick to silicon . Nobody in the world could say whether that
would even be possible but IBM believed in the solution and
that belief led ultimately, in 1998, to another patent - creating
copper connections between the transistors on a chip . ‘Big deal’,
do I hear you say? How about if I tell you that there are 1 billion
transistors on the newest generation of chips and that they have
a total of 6 kilometres (not a typing mistake) of connections?
You may be able to see that every improvement in conduction
leads to real practical applications . The ultimate effect of what
we named Copper Technology, means that IBM chips are many
times more powerful although they use very little power . Here
are some real-world examples:
* The largest supercomputer in the Netherlands is at SARA .
One of the reasons that SARA chose IBM was that it needed a
certain amount of computing power but was limited by space
constraints . None of our competitors could deliver the required
computing power without approaching the thermal limit .
* If we again mention Mars - all of the vehicles driving, standing,
flying and crawling around the Red Planet are running IBM
POWER processors with Copper Technology . A lot of computing
power is needed on Mars too but there also seems to be an issue
about electricity .
* The fastest supercomputer on this planet is the IBM RoadRunner,
which broke the magical limit of 1 Petaflops (that’s a ‘1’,
followed by 15 zeros) . It is also the ‘greenest’ in the world . A
large part of that computer consists of IBM processors using Copper
Technology .
The last thing I want to talk about here is the Cell Broadband
Engine processor . That was developed in a collaborative effort
involving Sony, Toshiba and IBM - and there’s something else!
The Dutch IBMer Peter Hofstee designed the Cell Broadband
Engine processor, which has 9 cores that can all run calculations
independently of one another . Here, too, the computing
power to energy consumption ratio is very favourable . The Cell
Broadband Engine processor is probably best known as the computing
heart of Sony’s PlayStation 3 but it’s also in the fastest
computer in the world - the IBM RoadRunner .
In other words, quite apart from a whole of host of great IBM
products and services, there’s an awful lot going on behind the
scenes . As Dr . Watson said, so many years ago - Think! Think! In
2008, we continue to try to do that . Think first, then act . n
By Frank van der Wal, Client IT Architect
with the assistance of Mieke Royers
Column |
53

54
Colophon
INSPIRE, is a publication by IBM Belgium NV . IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks or registered
trademarks of International Business Machines Corp . in the United States of America and/or other
countries . Other company, product or service names can be trademarks or service marks of others . ©
Copyright IBM Corporation 2008 . All rights reserved .
Editor-in-Chiefs
Marco van der Hoeven
Jos Vermaere
Ludwig Van den bergh
Final editing
Jos Vermaere
Ludwig Van den bergh
Mich Baron
Philippe Ceyssens
Leads United, PR Agency Antwerp
Photography
Anna Green
Joost Vyncke
Project Management
Mich Baron
Layout
Ogilvy Streamline Amsterdam
Address details
IBM Belgium
Avenue du Bourget/Bourgetlaan 42,
1130 Brussels
BELGIUM
mich .baron@be .ibm .com
Advertisers
I .R .I .S ICT NV/SA
IBM Belgium
OnDemand Rentals
Corismo

Need temporary more IT power ?
OnDemand Rentals.
Rent as much Hardware
as required.
www.rentibm.be

taLKiNG
ClogS roaDS.
DoiNG
MoveS PeoPle.
ibM is helping cities around the world design, build and operate smart traffic systems
that can help reduce gridlock and the environmental impact it causes. Start optimizing
complex systems at ibm.com/doing/be STOP TALKING Start DoiNG
IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corp. in the United States of America and/or other countries.
Other company, product or service names can be trademarks or service marks of others. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2008. All rights reserved.
56