IBM Turns On Virtual Blades for Partners, Helps Growing Ecosystem Accelerate Solutions to Blade Market

IBM Turns On Virtual Blades for Partners, Helps Growing Ecosystem Accelerate Solutions to Blade Market

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it is expanding its Virtual Loaner Program (VLP) to include IBM BladeCenter, enabling IBM Business Partners to have free remote access to the latest IBM computing systems to develop new applications without having to invest in added IT infrastructure. IBM has taken a different approach from competitors by opening up BladeCenter’s architecture to create market and revenue opportunities for hundreds of companies selling peripherals like network and storage cards, switches and software. To date more than 700 companies have received the BladeCenter design specifications or are part of the BladeCenter Alliance Program, and more than 80 additional companies have joined Blade.org, a collaborative community working to drive the future of the blade computing. With the Virtual Loaner Program, IBM is offering this growing ecosystem of partners another resource to help accelerate solutions to market.

Unlike other programs that offer remote access to computing resources, IBM’s Virtual Loaner Program places no time limitations on its users, who can access on-demand computing power for as long as needed — this is possible via its save and restore capabilities that enable the user to save their environment and then restore it in the exact configuration with persistent IP addresses in a subsequent reservation. Users can utilize these resources for education, testing, development, product demonstration, evaluation, and to provide proof of concepts for customers. The success of IBM’s Virtual Loaner Program, which to date has included resources via IBM System i and System p servers, has resulted in nearly 2000 reservations this year alone from over 500 IBM Business Partners.

“Today’s announcement is part of IBM’s commitment to building and investing in an ecosystem around blades at a time when analyst firm IDC predicts that one in three servers will be blades by 2010,” said Doug Balog, vice president and business line executive, IBM BladeCenter. “IBM business partners, including developers and integrators, are often faced with resource utilization challenges, needing fluctuating amounts of computing power at varying times. Through IBM’s Virtual Loaner Program, partners can tap into an on demand infrastructure that saves them money, resources and allows them unmatched flexibility as they work growing client bases.”

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