Press releases

PRESS RELEASES 2007

Novamber 2007

The first standards-based Service-Oriented Infrastructure (SOI) is announced today by Fujitsu Siemens Computers, the leading European IT provider. FlexFrame Infrastructure is a future-proofed dynamic IT platform for Service-Oriented Architecture-based application platforms. Delivering the rock-solid reliability, flexibility and virtualization capabilities only previously available to large system customers, but at open systems price points, the new FlexFrame Infrastructure design from Fujitsu Siemens Computers redefines the rules in a datacenter. It is designed as a generic, standardized platform that supports both physical and virtual hardware resource services. FlexFrame Infrastructure will be released in several functional steps throughout 2008.

The key point of FlexFrame Infrastructure and what sets it apart is that physical and virtualized system resources can be assigned to applications with a few mouse clicks. FlexFrame Infrastructure is the next milestone towards the Dynamic Data Center and it represents a new operating principle: the IT administrator defines the needed resources for a particular application which will then be allocated automatically. The complexity of managing physical and virtual resources is encapsulated in the system which enables carefree operations for the user.

FlexFrame Infrastructure dramatically simplifies the complex issue of dynamic server resource management within a datacenter. As an ideal platform for consolidation tasks it is inherently environmentally conscious and is a solution which responds the growing concerns for cost, cooling, power consumption and space management in data centers.

FlexFrame Infrastructure from Fujitsu Siemens Computers has been developed on the SOI philosophy, since it takes automated dynamic resource allocation to the next level – all based on existing industry standards, in a move that will accelerate the adoption of virtualization within data centers. It takes the risk and complexity out of service-oriented infrastructures, leaving companies free to concentrate on new enterprise applications and the benefits of SOAs.

For IT managers, meeting new and changing user demands will become as simple as “make a wish” – a welcome respite from the shifting playing field on which most IT departments are struggling to maintain service-oriented demands, such as internal Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for system uptime. This means FlexFrame Infrastructure continually monitors system availability and provides near-instantaneous response in case of failures.

FlexFrame Infrastucture is the ideal platform to develop the IT infrastructure to the next levels.
• It is ideal for consolidation tasks. Many servers are consolidated in a pool with central management of resources and high-availability.
• It makes it easy to support the dynamic shift of resources
• And finally it is the perfect foundation for service-oriented architectures on the application level. Key advantages are that server resources are pooled and shared to increase utilization, embedded high availability for maintaining service levels and increased business agility through the easy shift of real and virtualized resources between applications.

Underpinning its first-to-market advantage, Fujitsu Siemens Computers is able to draw on deep customer-based experience from its track record with more than 1000 installation enabling customers throughout EMEA to design, implement and operate dynamic computing infrastructures uniquely customized to their needs.

Dieter Herzog, Executive Vice President Infrastructure Products at Fujitsu Siemens Computers says: “In building the FlexFrame Infrastructure, our goal was to base complete service-oriented IT infrastructure for enterprise applications on industry-standard architectures. FlexFrame Infrastructure is the industry’s first application-agnostic out-of-the-box approach. Customers can embrace virtualization and reap the benefits of a truly dynamic IT infrastructure, without risk and without any downtime, simply by adapting their present-day infrastructures.”

Philip Dawson, Vice-President, Agenda Manager for Virtualization at Gartner, comments: “As server virtualization begins to move beyond the basics, enterprises must take care to ensure that their short-term gains from introducing virtualization, such as greater system flexibility and efficiency, are not eclipsed by bigger-picture, longer-term and potentially expensive-to-solve issues such as intra-system consolidation and true virtual resource sharing. As infrastructure consolidation moves towards emerging standards within virtualized enterprise environment, these standards are a vital part in persuading end customers that advanced system virtualization technologies are a worthwhile investment to meet future dynamic datacenter demands.”

Built on standard PRIMERGY BX Blade Servers from Fujitsu Siemens Computers, and running independently of operating systems and applications, FlexFrame Infrastructure adds a software layer, the ServerView PAN Manager that takes full control of industry-standard server, virtualized servers and I/O resources. ServerView PAN Manager provides a new level of intelligence for FlexFrame Infrastructure which ensures that all servers within the fully-virtualized environment are always running at optimal performance levels – and thanks to I/O-level virtualization capabilities, these can be adjusted on-the-fly. This involves adding a layer between network connection points by virtualizing the connections which is handled by the ServerView Virtual I/O manager (VIOM). As a result, workloads can easily be moved from one server to another without having to navigate SAN/LAN addressing issues. I/O virtualization avoids compatibility problems with existing network equipment and means that network administrators do not have to manage changes within the servers.

FlexFrame Infrastructure from Fujitsu Siemens Computers is agnostic of applications and base operating system as well as fully compatible with all available Hypervisor-level operating systems from vendors such as VMware and Xen.

ServerView PAN Manager is build on Egenera® PAN Manager™ software which has recently be released by the US-based technology company to other hardware vendors.