Lenovo Archives - ICT News

LENOVO STRENGTHENS DATA CENTER BUSINESS TO ACCELERATE GROWTH, ANNOUNCES NEW LEADERSHIP ROLES ON ITS MANAGEMENT TEAM

lukasik — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 08:46:35 +0000

LENOVO STRENGTHENS DATA CENTER BUSINESS TO ACCELERATE GROWTH, ANNOUNCES NEW LEADERSHIP ROLES ON ITS MANAGEMENT TEAM

CREATES BUSINESS UNITS TARGETED AT LARGEST, FASTEST GROWING MARKET SEGMENTS
KIM STEVENSON, FORMER INTEL CIO, APPOINTED AS SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER
THREE OTHER EXECUTIVES JOIN DATA CENTER SENIOR LEADERSHIP TEAM
BUILDS END-TO-END GLOBAL DATA CENTER SALES FORCE FOR A MORE RESPONSIVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Research Triangle Park, N.C. March 23, 2017 — To further accelerate growth in its global data center business, Lenovo (HKSE: 992) today announced several organizational moves that strengthen its management team and advance the company’s drive to become the industry’s most trusted global data center partner, while serving the fastest expanding market segments and further improving the responsiveness of its customer support. As part of this realignment, the company appointed Kim Stevenson, the former CIO of Intel, senior vice president and general manager, joining its Data Center Group’s senior management team along with three other executives named to new positions today.

The newly formed business units will lead Lenovo’s charge into five market segments: data center infrastructure; the software-defined data center; high-performance computing and artificial intelligence applications; “hyperscale” systems, and data center services. Each will be led by a general manager with responsibility for definition of offerings and go-to-market strategies in the segment, as well as responsibility for the entire business end-to-end.

Lenovo appointed Stevenson senior vice president and general manager leading its new Data Center Infrastructure (DCI) business segment, where she will oversee the company’s core data center products and solutions portfolio. Most recently, she spent eight years at Intel leading that company’s Client, Internet of Things and System Architecture (CISA) Group and serving as Intel CIO for four years. Before Intel, she spent seven years at the former EDS holding a variety of positions including vice president of its Worldwide Communications, Media and Entertainment (CM&E) Industry Practice. She began her career at IBM.

In addition to Stevenson, three current Lenovo executives, all of whom who have been with the company for approximately one year, will assume new positions on the Data Center Group’s senior leadership team. Laura Latrello, vice president and general manager, will continue in her role leading the data center services segment. Newly appointed business segment executive leaders will report directly to Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president & president, Data Center Group:

Paul Ju, vice president and general manager, Hyperscale – Ju joined Lenovo in September 2016 and has deep experience in hyperscale systems and cloud computing through management positions with leading global technology and data center providers.

Madhu Matta, vice president and general manager, High-Performance Computing & Artificial Intelligence – Matta joined Lenovo in November 2015 and brings deep experience in advanced computing technologies through executive assignments at leading server and storage companies.

Radhika Krishnan, executive director and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center – Krishnan’s unit also includes networking technologies and telco solutions. She joined Lenovo in February 2016 and has a deep background in advanced server, storage, networking and software-defined technologies.

Working to further its industry position as #1 in x86 server customer satisfaction for the past two years[1], Lenovo also made changes to significantly enhance its global data center sales force led by Roderick Lappin, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales & Marketing, Data Center Group. These moves will make the company faster and more agile in addressing changing market conditions to deliver even more responsive support to data center customers, and ultimately accelerate Lenovo’s growth to build on its position as the number three global provider of x86 servers.

Quote
Kirk Skaugen, Executive Vice President & President, Data Center Group
“Kim is a widely respected and highly accomplished technology leader, and we’re honored to have her join our team. Lenovo is attracting some of the industry’s best talent as we continue to expand our capabilities and breadth of solutions as a data center company. In addition, our new market segment-driven structure and global sales and marketing organization will enable us to be even more dynamic and responsive in helping our customers navigate today’s rapidly evolving technology and business landscape.”

[1] Technology Business Research, Inc. “Lenovo x86-based server customer satisfaction scores trend above competition”, December 2016

Source by Lenovo

Visit ICT Hardware website to get more info about Lenovo Products

The post LENOVO STRENGTHENS DATA CENTER BUSINESS TO ACCELERATE GROWTH, ANNOUNCES NEW LEADERSHIP ROLES ON ITS MANAGEMENT TEAM appeared first on ICT News.

LENOVO X6 SERVER ARCHITECTURE ACHIEVES 10 PERFORMANCE WORLD RECORDS

lukasik — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 07:46:52 +0000

LENOVO X6 SERVER ARCHITECTURE ACHIEVES 10 PERFORMANCE WORLD RECORDS

DEMONSTRATES ONGOING SAP HANA BENCHMARK PERFORMANCE WITH TWO NEW INDUSTRY-LEADING RESULTS

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – APRIL 4, 2017 – Lenovo (HKSE: 992) today announced its industry-leading X6 server platform has established 10 additional industry performance benchmarks, including two new SAP world records as well as a new Java and SPECcpu world record benchmark, bringing its world record total to 34 and continuing the X6 family’s string of number one or world-record benchmarks since its launch in 2014.

Designed to deliver maximum performance and uptime for applications and cloud deployments, the Lenovo X6 solutions are ideal for customers who are looking for reliability, manageability and scalability with the flexibility to run Windows or Linux operating systems. Today’s benchmark performance results reflect the company’s mission to help customers transform their data centers by embracing emerging data consumption and delivery models such as cloud-based infrastructure, big data and analytics solutions powered by Lenovo’s x3850 X6 and x3950 X6 server platforms.

New world-record result on two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution standard application benchmark on Windows¹
Continuing its long-standing history of achieving excellent performance results on SAP standard application benchmarks, the Lenovo System x3950 X6 achieved an outstanding 8-socket world record result on the Windows operating system for the two-tier SAP sales and distribution (SD) standard application benchmark. Designed to test the hardware and database performance of SAP applications and components, the x3950 delivered a 28 percent performance improvement over the previous-generation Lenovo system and a four percent improvement over E7-8890 v4 processors. For customers running SAP Business Suite applications, Lenovo’s latest benchmark result makes it the highest performing server for processing business transaction workflows in an SAP environment.

New result on SAP Business Warehouse Edition for SAP HANA standard application benchmark²
Lenovo also posted another world-record result on the SAP Business Warehouse Edition for SAP HANA (SAP BW/4HANA) standard application benchmark. The powerful 4-socket Lenovo system x3850 X6 delivered industry-leadership performance for all three key performance indicators for 1.3 billion records in a single-node setup. The SAP BW/4HANA standard application benchmark is the latest addition to the list of SAP BW benchmarks and its three phases — data load, query throughput and query runtime — aim to fully utilize the new capabilities of SAP HANA to process the benchmark workload. The result was achieved on the Lenovo System x3850, configured with four Intel Xeon processors, SAP HANA 1.0 and SAP NetWeaver 7.5. The Lenovo x3850 X6 provides the enterprise-class reliability and availability needed for business-critical applications running on SAP HANA. Lenovo delivers simple and scalable solutions for SAP HANA and is a worldwide leader in SAP HANA with over 6,800 deployments.

New SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark for compute-intensive applications³
Once again, Lenovo has posted a top SPEC CPU2006 benchmark score for the Lenovo System x3850 X6 4U rack server, using two high-performance Intel Xeon Processor E7-8894 v4 with 24 cores. Ideal for measuring multi-threaded compute-intensive applications, such as High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads, the x3850 X6 achieved a leadership SPECint_rate_base2006 score using two Intel Xeon E7-8894 v4 processors, 256 GB of TruDDR4 memory, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 (x86_64).

New overall world-record result on SPECjbb 2015 Java business benchmark⁴
Lenovo’s Lenovo System x3850 achieved leadership four-processor (4P) performance results for the SPECjbb2015 Distributed Benchmark. SPECjbb 2015 is a Java Business Benchmark and is the SPEC benchmark used for evaluating the performance of servers running typical Java applications. Using Java HotSpot 64-Bit Server VM (version 1.8.0_111) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1, the x3850 achieved 224,892 max-jOPS and 75,274 critical-jOPS scores, denoting the x3850 the highest performing server for the latest Java application response time and throughput.

Additional benchmark records in business processing, big data analytics and infrastructure virtualization
Finally, Lenovo maintains the top spot for an additional six benchmarks across a variety of industry tests including SPECint 2006⁵, SPECfp 2006⁶, SPECvirt 2013^7,8, STAC-M3 Shasta Suite⁹ and TPC-E¹⁰. Notably, Lenovo’s performance on TPC-E, which measures and compares the performance and price of various On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) and database systems, established the top four-processor result of 9,068.00 tpsE (transactions per second E) @ $139.85 USD/tpsE, a full 30 percent faster than the performance of the x3850 X6 using the prior generation Intel Xeon E7 v3 processors.¹¹ This is the best four-processor performance in the industry and joins Lenovo’s current number one 2P¹² and number one overall/8P¹³ performance results to extend Lenovo’s dominance of the TPC-E benchmark and OLTP performance.

Quote
“With over 30 world record benchmarks achieved this year, today’s results are an excellent testament to Lenovo’s industry-leading X6 server innovation and technology design,” said Kamran Amini, GM, Server and Storage Business Units at Lenovo. “Not only do these performance results demonstrate our ability to continuously improve on our own success, they reinforce Lenovo’s commitment to creating purposeful data center innovation that drives compelling business value for clients and their most demanding workloads and applications.”

About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $45 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology. Our portfolio of high-quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode Yoga brands), workstations, servers, storage, smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Moto brand), tablets and apps. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@Lenovo) or visit us at http://www.lenovo.com/sg/en.

Footnotes
¹Claim based on best-published 8-socket SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark result on Microsoft Windows published at http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 2-tier, 8x Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4 (192 cores/384 threads) on Lenovo System x3950 X6 with 2048 GB total memory on Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition using SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 and IBM DB2 10.1. Benchmark: SAP SD 2-Tier enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0. Source: Certification #2017002, http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx. Score: 77,098 benchmark users.
²Claim based on best-published SAP BW edition for SAP HANA Standard Application Benchmark @ 1.3 billion initial records result published at http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 4x Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4 (96 cores/192 threads) on Lenovo System x3850 X6 with 2048 GB total memory on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 using SAP HANA 1.0, SAP NetWeaver 7.50. Benchmark: SAP BW for SAP HANA @ 1.3B initial records, Source: Certification #2017003, http://www.sap.com/solution/benchmark/appbm/netweaver.sap-bw-edition-for-sap-hana-standard-application.html. Score: Runtime of Data Load/Trans (14,939 secs), Query Executions per Hour (4,273), Runtime of Complex Query (154 seconds).
³Claim based on best-published two-socket SPECint_rate_base2006 benchmark published at https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 2x Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4 (24 cores, 48 threads) on Lenovo System x3850 X5 with 256 GB memory on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1, using Version 17.0.0.098 of Intel C/C++ Compiler for Linux, Source: https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2017q1/cpu2006-20170124-46535.pdf. SPECint_rate_base2006 score 1840.
⁴Claim based on best four-socket published SPECjbb2015 Distributed max-jOPS published at https://www.spec.org/jbb2015/results/ as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 4 x Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4 on Lenovo System x3850 X6 with 512 GB total memory on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 using Java HotSpot 64-bit Server VM, version 1.8.0_111. http://www.spec.org/jbb2015/results/res2017q1/jbb2015-20170118-00140.html. SPECjbb2015 – Distributed scores: 224,892 max-jOPS and 75,274 critical-jOPS
⁵Claim based on best-published 8-socket SPECint_base2006 benchmark published at https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 8x Intel Xeon processor E7-8891 v4 (10 cores, 20 threads) on Lenovo System x3950 X6 with 1024 GB memory on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1, using Version 16.0.0.101 of Intel C/C++ Studio XE for Linux, Source: https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2016q3/cpu2006-20160809-43451.pdf. SPECint_base2006 score: 71.1.
⁶Claim based on best-published 8-socket SPECfp_base2006 benchmark published at https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 8x Intel Xeon processor E7-8891 v4 (10 cores, 20 threads) on Lenovo System x3950 X6 with 1024 GB memory on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1, using Version 16.0.0.101 of Intel C/C++ Studio XE for Linux, Version 16.0.0.101 of Intel Fortran Studio XE for Linux, Source: https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2016q3/cpu2006-20160809-43447.pdf. SPECfp_base2006 score: 129.
⁷Claim based on best-published 8-socket SPECvirt_sc2013 results published at https://www.spec.org/virt_sc2013/results/ as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 8x Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 on Lenovo System x3950 X6 with 4096 GB total memory on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 (KVM). Source: https://www.spec.org/virt_sc2013/results/res2016q3/virt_sc2013-20160830-00062-perf.html, SPECvirt_sc2013 score: 8284 @ 462 VMs.
⁸Claim based on best-published SPECvirt_sc2013 results published at https://www.spec.org/virt_sc2013/results/ as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 4x Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 on Lenovo System x3850 X6 with 2048 GB total memory on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 (KVM). Source: https://www.spec.org/virt_sc2013/results/res2016q3/virt_sc2013-20160913-00063-perf.html, SPECvirt_sc2013 score: 4377 @ 247 VMs.
⁹Claim based on best-published STAC-M3 15 world records (Shasta Suite) at http://www.stacresearch.com/m3 as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 4x Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 on Lenovo System x3850 X6 with 6144 GB total memory on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2-kernel 3.10.0-327 using Kx Systems kdb+ 3.3 software. STAC-M3 Tick Analytics Benchmarks, Shasta Suite (15 of 15 benchmarks required) source: http://www.STACresearch.com/KDB160425.
¹⁰Claim based on best-published four-socket TPC Benchmark E results published at http://www.tpc.org/tpce/results/tpce_perf_results.asp as of 7 February 2017. New configuration: 1-Node, 4x Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 on Lenovo System x3850 X6 with 4096 GB total memory on Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard using SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. Availability: July 31, 2016. Source: http://www.tpc.org/4078. Score: 9,068 tpsE, at a price /performance ratio of $139.85 USD/tpsE.
¹¹The #1 4P TPC-E performance result using prior generation processors was run on the Lenovo System x3850 X6, as of 7 February 2017. Result details are at: http://www.tpc.org/4072
¹²The #1 2P TPC-E performance result is held by the Lenovo System x3650 M5, as of 7 February 2017. Result details are at: http://www.tpc.org/4076
¹³ The #1 overall world-record TPC-E performance result is held by the eight-processor Lenovo System x3950 X6, as of 7 February 2017. Result details are at: http://www.tpc.org/4075

Source by Lenovo

Visit ICT Hardware website to get more info about Lenovo Products

The post LENOVO X6 SERVER ARCHITECTURE ACHIEVES 10 PERFORMANCE WORLD RECORDS appeared first on ICT News.

LENOVO DX8200D TO SIMPLIFY SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE ADOPTION

lukasik — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 09:02:03 +0000

LENOVO DX8200D TO SIMPLIFY SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE ADOPTION

APPLIANCE LEVERAGES STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION TO DRIVE HIGHER AGILITY AND SIMPLICITY WITH EXISTING SAN ARRAYS
OFFERING IMPROVES PERFORMANCE, REDUCES CAPEX AND OPEX VS TRADITIONAL SAN DEPLOYMENTS

Research Triangle Park, N.C. Mar. 14 — Lenovo (HKSE: 992) today announced a turnkey software-defined storage (SDS) appliance that leverages its robust server platform combined with advanced storage virtualization software and multi-core optimizing parallel I/O – SANsymphony from DataCore Software. This new offering is the latest milestone in Lenovo’s effort to drive adoption of software-defined data center technology, which offers compelling customer benefits such as higher agility and simplicity, as well as better cost economics.

Lenovo plans to offer the DX8200D as a pre-integrated appliance, which promises to greatly simplify deployment and reduce management expenses while providing a single point of support. The latest offering in Lenovo’s SDS portfolio, it enables data centers to rapidly deploy a turnkey solution that harnesses the capabilities of existing SAN arrays. It can optimize heterogeneous storage infrastructures, enabling them to scale as needs grow and easily replace older storage arrays. Through the centralized interface, the DX8200D provides data protection, replication, de-duplication, compression, and other enterprise storage capabilities at a much lower price point than traditional SAN arrays.

Built on Lenovo’s System x3650 M5 server, which offers leadership reliability and performance, the DX8200D is designed to deliver the highest levels of response times, availability and utilization. Lenovo will pre-test the appliances working with DataCore to reduce deployment risks and increase time-to-value. With Predictive Failure Analysis and a next-generation diagnostic panel to facilitate easy serviceability, the x3650 M5 server helps reduce downtime and costs. Lenovo Trusted Platform Assurance, a built-in set of security features and practices, protects the hardware and firmware.

The Lenovo DX8200D takes isolated storage devices, sometimes spread between different locations, and places them under one common set of enterprise-wide services. It pools their collective resources, managing them centrally and uniformly despite the differences and incompatibilities among manufacturers, models and generations of equipment.
With these appliances, data centers can realize lower total cost of ownership,[1] with an up to 90-percent decrease in time spend on storage management and support tasks, up to a 75-percent reduction in storage costs and up to 100-percent reduction in storage-related downtime. With a 10-fold increase in performance, data centers also can realize higher availability of mission-critical data.

Finally, the Lenovo DX8200D can centrally automate discovery, inventory tracking, real-time monitoring, configuration, fault detection, and alert handling over its lifecycle with Lenovo’s own XClarity software, a best-in-class enterprise management tool.
Technical assistance is available 24/7 with the DX8200D appliance, and features a single point of contact for both hardware and software questions from Lenovo’s support organization — which is consistently rated #1 for overall x86 server customer satisfaction.

Quotes
Lenovo: Radhika Krishnan, Executive Director & General Manager of Software-Defined Data Center & Networking, Data Center Group

“As an aggressive new player in this space, our cutting-edge SDS solution enables organizations to deploy their systems more quickly so they can reduce the time and resources required to manage their basic infrastructure. This in turn empowers our customers to focus on the business challenges of today, with a view to the future,” said Radhika Krishnan, executive director and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center & Networking, Data Center Group, Lenovo. “This is in stark contrast to traditional storage offerings, from legacy vendors, which often-times require compromises in performance, availability, reliability and functionality— limiting the ability to scale and increasing CAPEX, power, cooling and footprint costs.”

DataCore: George Teixeira, President & CEO, DataCore

“Lenovo’s powerful and reliable servers combined with DataCore’s parallel I/O processing software reset the standard for performance, cost-efficiency and seamless management across the diversity of storage and enterprise-class infrastructures,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore Software. “The Lenovo DX8200D, powered by DataCore, makes it simple to not only get started with software-defined storage, but also to grow and future-proof one’s investments. This turnkey appliance deploys quickly and non-disruptively into any environment, delivering immediate savings and performance benefits.”

[1]https://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/DataCore-sansymphony-v

Source by Levono

Visit ICT Hardware website to get more info about Lenovo Products

The post LENOVO DX8200D TO SIMPLIFY SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE ADOPTION appeared first on ICT News.

Intel claims storage speed record with its large-capacity Optane SSD

lukasik — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 09:22:04 +0000

Intel claims storage speed record with its large-capacity Optane SSD

The Optane DC P4800X SSD has 375GB of storage and is priced at $1,520

Intel’s first Optane storage modules came out in early January, but were only 32GB. Larger Optane drives with up to 1.5TB of storage capacity are on their way, and we now have a better understanding of how they’re going to perform.

The first large-capacity Optane SSD drive is the DC P4800X, which has 375GB of storage and started shipping on Sunday. The $1,520 SSD is targeted at servers. (Intel didn’t provide regional availability information.)

Intel says an enterprise Optane SSD with 750GB will ship in the second quarter, and that a 1.5TB SSD will ship in the second half of this year.

These SSDs will fit as add-in cards in the PCI-Express/NVMe and U.2 slots. That means they could work in some workstations and servers based on AMD’s 32-core Naples processors.

Optane will also ship in the form of DRAM modules next year. Intel did not share information on when it would ship consumer SSDs.

Optane has been hyped as a new class of superfast memory and storage that could replace today’s SSDs and DRAM. Intel has claimed Optane is up to 10 times faster than conventional SSDs.

The technology underpinning Optane is 3D Xpoint, a form of memory that stores data based on the resistance of cells. Intel developed 3D Xpoint with Micron, which later this year will release an Optane competitor called QuantX, aimed at enterprise SSDs.

For the first time, Intel has shared internal benchmarks on the large-capacity Optane drives compared to conventional flash SSDs. The Optane SSD DC P4800X was pitted against the three-year old SSD DC P3700 flash SSD, which is considered one of Intel’s fastest data-center SSDs in terms of random reads and writes.

The benchmarks indicate that the new Optane drive, in most real-world uses, won’t reach the levels of performance that Intel has been hyping up to now. On top of that, the benchmarks were conducted in complex environments that made the numbers hard to interpret.

In a nutshell, Intel said that if you run sequential tasks, it would be better to use conventional SSDs. Optane lights up when running random reads and writes, which are common in servers and high-end PCs. Optane’s random writes reach up to 10 times faster compared to conventional SSDs, but only when utilization is being pushed to extremes, while reads are around three times faster.

In a standard 4K data block, with 70 percent read and 30 percent write, the P4800X was five to eight times faster than the older P3700. The responsiveness of the drive increased with the data load.

Aside from the unusual benchmarking presentation by Intel, Optane has promise, and it could be the storage technology of the future. However, flash-based SSDs are well-established and Optane won’t unseat them overnight, according to analysts.

Optane is more expensive and still being developed, and joins the ranks of other technologies like MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) and RRAM (resistive RAM) trying to unseat flash.

Intel took a long time to develop large-capacity Optane SSDs, and there is some concern about the drive’s durability. The P4800X has a five-year warranty, but it remains to be seen how long the drive will last.

Optane SSDs will speed up data movement among servers in data centers, said James Myers, director for NVM Solutions Architecture at Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group.

Storage is a big bottleneck, and the Optane SSDs will reduce latency. That will improve the productivity of servers, and will help in applications like analytics, which deal with large data sets. Optane could be used for for caching or long-term or short-term storage.

Optane SSDs could also be used to expand memory capacity in servers by mimicking DRAM with the help of a hypervisor, Myers said. To make this happen, Intel will sell software called Memory Drive for Optane drives. This feature will only work on servers with Intel’s upcoming Xeon chips based on the Skylake architecture, and won’t work with AMD chips.

Applications that will benefit from Optane include MySQL and Memcached, which are popular with cloud providers. Data movement in servers run by companies like Facebook and Google is fast to ensure instant responses to social media or search requests.

Intel’s Myers also saw the storage fitting into hyperconverged environments, in which Optane is closer to the CPU, or in an array. Optane isn’t a particularly good fit for typical networked storage arrays like EMC’s EqualLogic, which are extremely popular, but Myers is pinning hopes on companies moving to hyperconverged infrastructures.

Intel estimated that two servers with P4800X drives could provide 10 times more MySQL transactions than with P3700 SSDs. It would also result in a 91 percent reduction in cost per transaction.

But there’s a heavy cost involved in changing the data-center infrastructure to fit the superfast Optane drives. In the long run, the Optane drives may be beneficial in speeding up database, cloud and machine-learning applications, but switching over to a hyperconverged environment could call for wholesale changes in server hardware, virtualization environment, and organization of storage in data centers.

Also, Optane SSDs don’t play well in in-memory applications like SAP HANA. In theory, the Memory Drive feature could be used so the Optane SSDs mimic DRAM, which can ultimately be used by in-memory applications. Intel is in talks with major in-memory application providers to build usage of Optane SSDs, Myers said.

Companies are increasingly backing Optane, Myers said. Facebook has been trying out Optane for more than a year, but hasn’t reported results. IBM has incorporated Optane storage in its Bluemix cloud service, but hasn’t talked about benchmarks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is going to offer Optane SSDs as a media option in 3PAR arrays. The current latency for all-flash arrays is about 400 microseconds to 1 millisecond, and with 3D Xpoint/Optane it will come down to 200 microseconds, said HPE’s Eduardo Duarte, 3Par product manager, in a video at the Discover trade show in London in December.

Optane compatibility will also be validated for VMware’s vSAN virtualized storage environments. Alibaba also has committed to using Optane in its database and machine-learning infrastructure, Myers said. Intel is also talking with Microsoft to validate Optane for Windows Server storage environments.

In addition, a range of companies including Lenovo, Nutanix and Dell Technologies have confirmed that they will come out with hardware based on Optane.

By Agam Shah, source by ComputerWorld

Visit ICT Hardware website to get more info about HP, Microsoft, Lenovo Products

The post Intel claims storage speed record with its large-capacity Optane SSD appeared first on ICT News.

Lenovo Surprises With Home Tech Play

lukasik — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 14:50:47 +0000

Lenovo watchers expected the company to announce a number of new laptops when CES rolled around, but the company surprised on Tuesday when it also unveiled new products aimed at the home technology market.

“The Smart Assistant and Smart Storage line probably caught everyone off guard,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

Lenovo developed its Smart Assistant with Amazon. Like Amazon’s Echo, the Lenovo assistant uses the Alexa cloud-based voice services to respond to a user’s spoken commands. It can do such things as conduct Web searches, play music, create lists and provide calendar updates.

Pricing for the Smart Assistant starts at US$129.99; the Harmon Kardon edition starts at $179.99. The units are offered in three colors: light gray, green or orange. They are scheduled to go on sale in May.

Lenovo also raised the curtain on a new controller, the Lenovo 500 Multimedia Controller. The palm-sized wireless keyboard of the unit acts as both a keyboard and Windows 10 gesture-supported touchpad.

The unit is designed for convenience. Every key is within a thumb’s reach, and the controller’s wireless range is 65.6 feet, more than double the range (32.8 feet) of conventional wireless remotes.

Scheduled for sale in March, the 500 Multimedia Controller is priced at $54.99.

Smart Storage

Lenovo announced a new network storage device, Lenovo Smart Storage, that offers 6 terabytes of disk space. It supports dual-band wireless access and multidevice synchronization, as well as built-in facial recognition software for managing photos by faces.

Lenovo Smart Storage will sell for $139.99 when it becomes available in May.

The company announced the immediate availability of its Phab 2 Pro smartphone ($499.99).

The Phab 2 Pro supports Tango, a technology for running virtual and augmented reality applications. For example, an app called “Measure,” which is included in the Phab 2, allows users to measure interiors and real world objects.

“More than any other PC company, Lenovo has aggressively tested the waters for new categories and accessories,” observed Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research.

“Clearly, more immediate revenue will come from its upgraded laptop lineup,” he told TechNewsWorld. “However, it is showcasing products that take on AR, VR and smart home.”

Beneficial Partnering

Teaming up with Amazon on the Smart Assistant is a good move on Lenovo’s part, since the device has the highest volume opportunity of all the products in the new categories, said Rubin.

“Since it was developed with Amazon, we can bet on Amazon.com featuring it pretty prominently, helping with distribution,” he added. “That’s been a weak point for many of the company’s previous product category explorations.”

Although the companies collaborated on Smart Assistant, Lenovo may have made a device that outshines its partner’s.

“With the Harmon Kardon Smart Assistant, it appears they are offering a better product than Amazon’s Echo,” Moor Insights’ Moorhead told TechNewsWorld — “which is ironic, because it uses Alexa from Amazon.”

New Laptops

In addition to its new products for the home, Lenovo announced a number of new notebook computers:

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon, available in black or silver, squeezes a 14-inch display into a 13-inch form factor. It’s light, at 2.5 pounds, and its battery can run 15 hours between charges, according to the company. The unit supports Thunderbolt 3, LTE-A Wireless WAN and WiGig. It has a fingerprint sensor with a dedicated chip to handle biometric processing, and it has an infrared camera for logging on to the computer through facial recognition. The notebook goes on sale in February starting at $1,349.
The ThinkPad X1 Yoga has a 14-inch OLED display and is being offered in a new color, silver. It has a redesigned rechargeable pen and rise-and-fall keyboard. The Yoga will be available in February, starting at $1,499.
In the detachable-screen notebook department, Lenovo is offering up the Miix 720, which has a 12-inch QHD+ display, a touchpad-enabled keyboard, Thunderbolt 3 support, and an infrared camera for facial recognition.

Lenovo also announced a new gaming line of notebooks, called “Legion.” There are two models — the Y720 and Y520 — that have Nvidia graphics, Dolby Atmos sound and the latest Intel Core i7 processor.

Better Pen

To go along with the Miix 720, Lenovo is offering its Active Pen 2, which will be available in February at $59.99. This edition of the pen tries to address a bothersome problem with digital pens.

“They’ve increased the friction element to the pen to give it a more natural writing experience,” said Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and notebook research at IHS Markit.

“That’s something users constantly indicate they want on a laptop, so it feels more like pen on paper,” she told TechNewsWorld.

Many users also will appreciate Lenovo’s decision to install Microsoft’s Optimized Signature Image on their new laptops, which should mean less bloatware.

“Maybe we won’t have Candy Crush Soda Saga on our business laptops anymore,” Eric Grevstad, a contributing editor to PC Magazine, told TechNewsWorld.

Solid Lineup

The biometric and connectivity features give the new notebooks a leg up on their competitors in the market, especially in the eyes of enterprise buyers, but that advantage may be short-lived, noted David McQueen, a research director at ABI Research.

“Lenovo has a window of opportunity to get these devices into the enterprise because of the biometric and connectivity features,” he told TechNewsWorld, “but they have a limited shelf life and will be replicated by others relatively soon.”

Overall, Lenovo’s new notebook lineup is solid, observed Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

“The updates to the Thinkpad X1 family are solid extensions of that platform, and the Legion laptops should put Lenovo on a more equal footing with other gaming PC vendors, like Dell and HP,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“It’s hard to say at this time how advantageous the new Smart Assistant, 500 Multimedia Controller and Phab 2 Pro will be,” King added, “but that’s mainly because I expect numerous other vendors to deliver similar devices at CES.”

By John P. Mello Jr. Source by technewsworld.com

Visit ICT Hardware to get more info about Lenovo Products.

The post Lenovo Surprises With Home Tech Play appeared first on ICT News.

Lenovo In Talks With Fujitsu On Japan PC Pact As Market Share, Margins Are Squeezed

Lama — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 09:32:00 +0000

As the PC market’s growth slows and competition intensifies, Lenovo is looking to keep channel partners happy in the U.S. and build its premium product line depth around the world.

Earlier this week, Lenovo channel chief Sammy Kinlawtold a crowd a the Best of Breed conference: “I’m charged with growing PCs at a high double-digit growth at a premium to the market.”

While it seeks aggressive unit growth, Lenovo is also looking to grow margins with higher-end products. This week Fujitsu confirmed it was in talks with the Chinese firm; the two companies are exploring various avenues of cooperation.

In the U.S. channel market, that news isn’t sending shockwaves. “I can’t see it making any difference,” said Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., a solution provider that works with Lenovo. “It’s kind of surprising because if you said Fujitsu makes PCs, I would say, ‘really?'”

Goldstein said LAN Infotech’s Lenovo PC business has been growing, especially with the X1 line in verticals like legal, health care and insurance. “It’s definitely growing, and the X1 is pretty amazing,” Goldstein said. “We’ve been loving life with that. Everyone is wondering if they’re getting a desktop replacement, they’re saying, ‘I don’t need a desktop anymore, and oh, I can carry it around with me.'”

But cooperation, on any level, with Fujitsu would give Lenovo a strong foothold in the profitable, high-end Japanese PC market.

“The opportunity in Japan’s PC market is premium-heavy,” said Jack Narcotta, a senior analyst at Technology Business Research Inc. “It may not move the needle in terms of shipments, but each PC is $800 or $900 rather than the $400 or $500 in the U.S. or EMEA. Lenovo is still No. 1 in the market, but their numbers are going down. When you can’t figure out a way to fix that problem, the focus shifts to getting as much profit from the ones you are selling.”

Narcotta said the biggest question surrounding the Lenovo-Fujitsu partnership is whether it will help Lenovo’s PC business long-term. “What’s the long-term play? How long of a runway do they have before they reach saturation in the market and end up in the same place they’re in now?” Narcotta said.

In the third quarter, Lenovo shipped 14.5 million PCs, barely edging out HP Inc., which shipped 14.4 million units, according to IDC. Lenovo’s total represented a 3.2 percent decline while HP increased its worldwide shipments by a nearly identical amount.

Interestingly, Dell and Asus showed the most growth in the third quarter. Dell’s shipments during the quarter grew 6.2 percent; it shipped 10.8 million units giving it ia market share of 15.8 percent. Asus shipped 4.7 million units during the quarter, a year-over-year increase of 5.2 percent, according to IDC.

Fujitsu shunted its Japan PC business to a new wholly-owned subsidiary early this year and had been weighing its options for the business.

In its statement, Lenovo said a joint venture with Fujitsu could provide an opportunity to grow its PC business using Fujitsu’s sales, support, R&D and manufacturing acumen together with its own scale and supply chain expertise.

Lenovo said Fujitsu would continue to provide support to customers and channel partners while it works out what form its announced “cooperation” will take.

By Matt Brown, Source by http://www.crn.com

The post Lenovo In Talks With Fujitsu On Japan PC Pact As Market Share, Margins Are Squeezed appeared first on ICT News.