Service detail
Highlights
 |  | | Reduces the number of servers in an infrastructure to help lower costs |
| | | Creates an IT infrastructure designed to support greater business flexibility |
| | | Improves resource utilization for potentially higher returns on investments |
| | | Provides a comprehensive assessment and business case to identify cost savings |
| | | Consolidates workloads and helps migrate data and applications |
| | | Provides a foundation for advanced optimization and energy-efficient data center initiatives |
| | | Typically reduces a client's TCO by 30% to 70%* |
One of the surest ways to improve your competitive position is to become more efficient. For your IT environment, that means simplifying. Reducing the number of servers required to support your applications is a great way to get started, but IBM can help you go even further. With our application focus, workload expertise, skills and tools, IBM can help keep your applications whole and running smoothly while facilitating cost and energy savings in places you never thought possible.
Addressing your consolidation requirements
IBM provides the full spectrum of consolidation expertise—from study results that help you understand potential efficiencies to end-to-end complex deployments that move you to the latest technology without disrupting your business operations. That includes maintaining your applications and data throughout the consolidation process and ensuring that they are migrated appropriately.
Server consolidation services from IBM draw on a center of competency staffed with highly skilled IBM professionals whose sole focus is developing and executing consolidation best practices. The services use a consolidation methodology crafted through IBM's extensive experience in building efficient data centers across the world.
All services, including design, strategy, planning, implementation, testing and application and data migration are built on IBM's extensive server and application product offerings and proven track record for designing, deploying and managing data center environments. And each solution is built to fit the unique requirements of your business.
Laying the foundation
Beyond the ability to help you reduce the number of servers in your environment and improve the performance and utilization of those that remain, server consolidation services from IBM can provide a foundation for implementing more advanced optimization initiatives. These can include initiatives such as virtualization and dynamic system provisioning, cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Server consolidation services can also help provide the groundwork for building energy-efficient systems and data centers. Our comprehensive approach to server consolidation helps clients like you design, build and manage environmentally responsible data centers by:
- Eliminating unused applications and servers.
- Implementing energy management of IT resources.
- Upgrading to new, more efficient technology.
Download "An examination of server consolidation: Trends that can drive efficiencies and help businesses gain a competitive edge" (PDF, 247KB).
Focusing on workloads and data
For more than 25 years, IBM has been providing application and data migration services. Our proven methodologies are designed to be cost effective and help mitigate risk as you migrate to new IBM systems. Using these methodologies, IBM can help you plan your migration to eliminate business and IT disruptions.
Using best-of-breed analytical tools, IBM develops a high-level technical and financial road map that identifies optimization opportunities in your server environment and the best targets for migration. While no two migrations are identical, the process IBM uses to drive success is always the same whether for an infrastructure migration, data migration, ISV package, custom application or a combination of all four.
Download the "hows" and "whys" of migration: The IBM helps answers key questions (PDF, 247KB).
Getting started
Whether you need help with a business case or start-to-finish consolidation of your IT environment, we can help you define the scope of your project and develop a road map for your server consolidation. And if you need more help, we can evaluate your workloads and infrastructure and provide a comprehensive business case, outlining total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment, with alternatives and a strategy that will meet the needs and challenges of your business for the next three to five years. For more advanced optimization initiatives, we can show you how to optimize your IT infrastructure using new technologies that enhance operational and cost performance by concentrating on:
- Power and cooling.
- Space utilization.
- Application performance requirements.
- Automation and virtualization.
Perhaps you have a particular focus relative to application. Whatever your needs, we can help you consolidate your workloads and upgrade databases and applications—including your customer in-house UNIX® applications—with technical expertise and services that span heterogeneous environments. Get on the consolidation path with IBM to create a more dynamic and robust infrastructure ready to meet the fast-changing needs of your business.
