IBM Cloud Pak for Data System with Netezza Performance Server

For years, companies have been accumulating data at an impressive pace. Some of this data is being duplicated across various clouds and repositories at astounding levels. This duplication leads to data silos, high costs, delayed projects and increased security risks.

Data users assigned to an analytics initiative spend as much as 60 percent of their overall time trying to locate the data they need. Organizations have existing processes to store data in multiple repositories, clouds and back-end systems and have invested resources to move data to a central location where it can be managed, controlled and made accessible. However, most centralized big data projects still fail to deliver on the promise of easy and controlled data access. Turning that failure to success would allow data scientists to access data across their organization wherever it resides. This greatly reduces the amount of time spent searching for data.

As such, IBM developed Cloud Pak for Data System, a hyper-converged system that combines software, storage, compute and networking. Built on a governed data and AI platform, Cloud Pak for Data System simplifies and unifies the management, governance and analysis of data. It allows you to provision and deploy data services flexibly and rapidly, tailored to specific needs. Users can automatically add discovered hardware nodes and add software from an app-like experience to expand their System.

The Cloud Pak for Data System installation is designed to be as simple as using the software itself. Hyper-converged technology makes it possible for users to scale and evolve their infrastructures simply and economically as application loads change. Cloud Pak for Data System includes a flexible microservices software architecture and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

Customers are aware of the value and speed cloud provides to their applications and services and want the same efficiency in their own data centers. Cloud Pak for Data System offers accelerated time to value, allowing an entire private cloud system to be stood up for a data and AI architecture in hours. That's why we also call it a “cloud in a box.”

Hyper-convergence enables a software-defined data center to provide cost-effective agility, scalability and security. Customers can quickly develop applications and analyze their data in a security-rich environment within their own firewalls and expand as they need rather than resort to expensive capital outlays. Most importantly, developers don’t need to change how they deploy applications, whether they’re working in the cloud or their own data center.

When your needs outgrow your existing installation, Cloud Pak for Data System simplifies expansion. Buy small increments of computing or storage capacity as needed, rather than spending excessively on capital. Based on application demand and delivery, budgeting can be completed in quarterly expansions on an ad hoc basis. When the hardware arrives, it’s pre-loaded and configured with software and licenses. Once installed in the data center, the existing cluster will automatically discover new hardware and licenses, inherit all user configurations, and be ready to use in a few hours. The platform evolves based on each enterprise's needs and scalability, and it’s all managed and highly available to help ensure maximum performance and productivity.

Cloud Pak for Data System delivers on the use cases above with accelerated deployment, optimized performance, and reduced footprints—all behind a firewall on premise in your data center.

Beyond the benefits of the platform, the hyper-converged infrastructure offers proven performance, scalability, intelligence and simplicity for business needs. It helps companies with:

• Total Cost of Ownership: At low levels of usage, a public cloud may be cost-effective, but as companies ramp up usage, an on-premises implementation through Cloud Pak for Data System is much more cost-effective.
• Optimized hardware: Based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors with optimized software extensions for improved performance and security, Cloud Pak for Data System outperforms commodity hardware, providing the same benefits with less infrastructure.
• Proximity: Cloud Pak for Data System brings compute to your data, which results in lower network/data transfer costs and better performance especially as data volumes grow. Many public cloud providers charge each time the data stored in the cloud is accessed or moved. Over time, it can add up to a large sum. This is in addition to the data storage costs in the cloud.
• Fully Dedicated: With the addition of Cloud Pak for Data System, you can gain the benefits of the data and AI platform without sacrificing other workloads. This limits the impact that other workloads can have on the platform performance.
• Continuous Availability/Business Continuity: Redundancy is built into the System at every level to ensure there is no single point of failure across most hardware and software components.
• Privacy/Security: The platform operates behind your firewall and adheres to strict security compliance guidelines, helping organizations keep up with ever-changing data governance regulations.
• Installation: IBM provides full installation of the Cloud Pak for Data System at your data center, ensuring that the System is up and running once set-up is complete.
• Serviceability: IBM fixes hardware failure at no additional cost. Users can choose to create tickets for hardware replacements, use call-home features and start software upgrades without downtime.
• Extensions: Extended services on Cloud Pak for Data allow users to expand the data and AI capabilities of the platform through services such as Data Virtualization, Watson Assistant, Watson Studio and Watson OpenScale.