Assembly - November 2008 - (Page 31) of the role Poughkeepsie maintains to ensure our customers recognize and capitalize on the relationships and investments they make with IBM.” The products made at the 2008 Assembly Plant of the Year typically end up in data centers—secure backroom facilities that are filled with banks of computers that process highvolume transactions such as credit card purchases and drivers license forms. Data centers form the backbone of the world’s IT infrastructure. However, many of them are undergoing a dramatic transformation, which is increasing demand for IBM’s new products, such as the System z10. According to a recent study conducted by Gartner Inc. (Stamford, CT), a research and consulting firm, more than 70 percent of large corporations will have to modify their data centers during the next five years. Businesses are working to not only greatly reduce the inefficiency and complexity of their data centers, but also to share IT resources more efficiently and better align them to ever-changing business conditions. Exploding demand for digital transactions enabled by the Internet is also creating crowded, overburdened corporate data centers. Many facilities have become highly distributed and somewhat fragmented. As a result, they are limited in their ability to change quickly and support the integration of new types of technologies and transactions. In addition, many companies are attempting to boost their operating efficiency by reducing computer power, cooling costs and floor space requirements. Approximately 87 percent of today’s data centers were built before 2001, when cheap power and falling hardware costs permitted IT organizations to increase productivity while ignoring energy resources. Energy costs associated with running data centers, based on million instructions per second (MIPS), are expected to rise from less than 10 percent to 30 percent of IT budgets in the coming years. “That’s why the System z10 features an 85 percent smaller footprint and up to 85 percent lower energy costs than its predecessor,” says Robert Edge Jr., systems engineering manager. “Advances in IBM high-end server technology have drastically reduced the physical footprint of the frame,” says Edge. “In the 1960s, it would have taken a tractor trailer to ship a System/360 to a customer location. Today, machines with much more processing power can be shipped on a single pallet.” High-Mix Production Manufacturing operations at IBM Poughkeepsie include a diverse set of processes, ranging from high-volume, repetitive, plug-and-placement panel assembly to moderately complex build-to-plan nodes to lower volume, highly complex build-to-order fulfillment cells. Those one-of-a-kind build configurations are engineered and manufactured to very demanding www.assemblymag.com November 2008 / ASSE M B LY 31 http://www.baltecorporation.com http://www.baltecorporation.com http://www.assemblymag.com
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