BCU configures IBM’s DB2 Data Warehouse Edition, Total Storage DS4800 and iServer technologies into a turnkey appliance system that runs on Novell SUSE or Red Hat Linux operating systems.
IBM unveiled the product at its Information On Demand conference in Anaheim, California this week.
IBM says the product is targeted at high-end enterprise data warehousing. According to Karen Parrish, vice president of IBM’s business intelligence solutions division, the move to Linux was driven by increased customer demand for Linux based versions of its data warehousing products.
She said the BCU pre-configuration, which is architected around modular nodes, simplifies the deployment of BI infrastructure, allowing customers to easily add more processing nodes into the appliance to balance out performance.
IBM entered the data warehouse appliance market in the summer of 2005 when it announced its pSeries-based DB2 BCU Risc appliance. Appliances pre-integrate commodity hardware, database software and storage components that are optimized for rapid querying and retrieval of data, offering attractive price-performance ratios over conventional enterprise data warehouses.
Netezza and Datallegro are the leading appliance vendors right now. Both claim to be making inroads in the data warehousing market, forcing incumbents like IBM to acknowledge appliances as serious competitors in some of their lower-end accounts.
