IBM lays out the future for idle computers

Posted on 13 Feb 2003 at 15:47

The Chief Technology Officer of IBM's PC Division, Brian Connors, was in London today briefing journalists on IBM's vision for the PC.

Completing a European tour, Connors was in London to signpost IBM developments for PCs in business computing.

The main emphasis concerned 'e-business on demand' - the idea of computing resources being flexibly managed to balance processing loads.

He identified this as a major new phase in computing, one that occurs ever four or five years. Following the simple 'publish and consume' model of people accessing Web pages with browsers, the industry had moved on to integrating - internally and externally - their business processes. What comes next is the efficient consumption of computing resources at the point of need. Not so much to provide additional computing power, but to more efficiently maximise the resources available.

The indications were that leading edge enterprise scale customers were already addressing this issue, even if medium-sized companies and ordinary computer users were not yet involved with the issue.

In a harsh economic climate - where big companies are looking to make big cost savings - it was inevitable that the pressure would be on to maximise the computing resources available. What else can be done with that faster processor, that bigger disk, he asked?

He quoted a Gartner statistic that 95 per cent of time computer resources are unused. The strategy is to make clients on the network more effective for the business as a whole. One possible scenario he quoted was for batch processing to be performed at night on a company's computerised cash tills standing idle at night.

The heart of his message was that 'client' resources - such as networked PCs - need to do more to earn their keep, to 'become better citizens'. Reportedly, 80 per cent of the total cost of a PC involves operational support, with only 20 per cent representing the purchase price.

One half of the solution of course is to simplify the maintenance of distributed PCs, both in terms of automated technical support for users and better image management for sysadmins.

It is from this latter perspective that IBM's emphasis on 'Autonomic computing' arises, ie the use of hardware and software to reduce the cost of system maintenance. This can involve 'self-healing' in terms of system configuration and improved support for disaster recovery.

On an optimistic note, he believed that when such cost savings were achieved over a period of time, further investments in technology would be the benefit, for example in wireless and security systems.

Author: Alun Williams