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August 26, 2014

IBM and Inspur to Advance Big Data and Analytics Innovation in China

ARMONK, N.Y. and JINAN, China, Aug. 26 — IBM and Inspur today announced the companies are committing to make Big Data and Analytics and transaction processing solutions available to customers and ISVs in China, giving them the ability to access and make sense of huge volumes of information in real-time. The two companies have collaborated and enabled IBM DB2 and IBM WebSphere Application Server software to operate on Inspur TS K1 Systems. In addition, Inspur will leverage an OpenPOWER Foundation reference design and capabilities to create innovative system solutions.

“Inspur looks forward to teaming with IBM to drive business innovation for local clients using the latest IBM technologies, business expertise and superior client support,” said Sun Pishu, Chairman and CEO of Inspur. “Inspur’s growing partnership with IBM and our collaboration in the OpenPOWER Foundation demonstrates our joint commitment to fuel innovation in China.”

IBM DB2 and WebSphere Software Now Available on Inspur TS K1 Systems

IBM DB2 and Websphere Application Server software are now available on Inspur TS K1 Systems. Inspur will recommend IBM’s DB2 with BLU Acceleration and WebSphere Application Server software as the preferred middleware platform for new projects using Inspur’s TS K1Systems platform. Inspur K1 TS Systems is a mission critical server autonomously developed by China. The K-UX operating system on the server is the fifth Unix operating system that has been certified by Unix03.

IBM’s DB2 with BLU Acceleration is the next generation platform delivering in-memory computing analytics with high performance transaction processing in one database, providing faster answers to today’s business problems. WebSphere Application Server helps customers respond to enterprise and market needs more quickly by enabling rapid development and deployment of web, mobilesocial and analytic applications. The IBM software platform, combined with Inspur’s advanced technology of TS K1 Systems, can offer client value across all industries and create a competitive edge for customers in China by making it simpler, faster and more economical when compared to alternative software platforms that analyze massive amounts of data and process transactions.

Inspur will recruit a strategic ecosystem of partners to adopt the DB2 and WebSphere platform. Some of Inspur’s strategic software partners have already started porting to IBM middleware. IBM and Inspur also will jointly develop a Center of Excellence to support the ISVs and customers for this new platform.

IBM’s development laboratory in Beijing will optimize the platform for specific partner requirements and to develop new analytical applications. The agreement will help speed time-to-value for Big Data projects.

Inspur to Develop System Solutions Based on OpenPOWER Foundation Innovations

IBM will support Inspur’s development of OpenPOWER Foundation based system solutions. IBM will make available its new POWER8 processors, support chips, and technical assistance and support services to help Inspur design its systems. In addition, Inspur will use system reference design materials provided through the OpenPOWER Foundation, and open source firmware and software available through open source communities.

This news follows an announcement made in Beijing this spring that Inspur had joined the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community dedicated to accelerating data center innovation and transforming system designs based on the POWER8 architecture. The OpenPOWER Foundation makes POWER hardware and software available for open development, as well as licensable POWER intellectual property. It now has 53 members – 10 of which, including Inspur, are from China.

“IBM is working with Inspur to develop an ecosystem of innovation, to create more value for our joint customers,” said D.C. Chien, Chairman and CEO, IBM Greater China Group. “We look forward to continuing this important collaboration. These new initiatives, including our work as members of the OpenPOWER Foundation, clearly demonstrate how our customers can benefit from our optimized platforms for the most demanding computing needs.”

According to industry analysts, China will be one of the leading countries in Big Data technology adoption. IDC expects the Big Data technology and services market in China to grow at 38.7% compound annual growth rate from US$165.5 million to US$850 million by 2017.

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