International Business Machines Corporation announced new software to help organizations extend crucial business applications running on System z mainframes to web, cloud and mobile environments. The software's performance improvements will enable companies to significantly reduce operating costs while helping businesses seamlessly and efficiently extend services for support of modern infrastructures. The new software helps companies deliver innovative solutions to their customers and reduce costs by: Providing support for Java 7, new UTF-8 built-ins, debugging enhancements and support for unbounded tables and groups. Supporting a new level of z/OS System Management Facilities (SMF) tracking, which allows users who implement sub-capacity tracking to reduce their administrative overhead. Improving control over XML documents with the z/OS XML parser, allowing arsing workload to be off loaded to specialty engines to reduce operating costs.

International Business Machines Corporation announced that French Managed Services Provider (MSP) Zetark will deploy their enterprise cloud storage services on PureFlex running IBM SmartCloud Entry. IBM PureFlex provides Zetark with a fully integrated set of server, storage, network and management resources allowing them to provision new environments for customers rapidly and at low incremental cost. As a result of the new solution, Zetark has been able cut the typical customer deployment time from two months to just two weeks. Additionally, PureFlex delivers extremely low power consumption - just 750 watts for 1 PB of data storage - and allows customers to deploy virtual servers in just 30 seconds. IBM SmartCloud Entry transforms virtualized systems into a ready-made, highly scalable cloud infrastructure that empowers end users with new services on demand. With today's announcement, IBM SmartCloud Entry now provides a greater selection of hypervisors to choose from. [1] SmartCloud Entry also includes an enhanced end-user Web portal for rapid self-service workload provisioning, as well as pre-configured virtual machine images that allow clients and Business Partners to further adapt their Cloud assets to meet their business needs.

IBM announced it has been appointed as the Technology and Innovation Partner in the Thames Water AMP6 Alliance. IBM together with Thames Water will create innovative strategies by analyzing big data and social media with the aim of improving operations and customer interaction while preparing the water company for future transformation. As part of the alliance IBM will help shape the water company's business plan which supports essential improvements to aging water and sewer networks across London and the Thames Valley. Based on collaboration, innovation and sustainability, Thames Water aims to integrate its supply chain with business planning to improve outcomes pre set for the next regulatory period (AMP6) between 2015-2020. Additionally, the alliance will focus on boosting safety, reducing total expenditure and environmental impact alongside lowering energy and chemical costs. As the Technology and Innovation Partner, IBM will introduce Big Data analytical capabilities to provide deep insight into existing business and service data. The analysis will provide valuable information to help identify innovation opportunities to transform the management of assets, interaction with customers and suppliers and how key risks to the business are proactively managed. Other key areas being targeted include smart metering, treatment processes, the application of nanotechnology for energy production and environmental pollution prevention.