SCIENCE

IBM has announced that HeiTech Padu Berhad (HeiTech), Malaysia's leading information and communications technology company, is the first in the ASEAN region to use IBM's new zEnterprise mainframe server.

From a performance standpoint, the zEnterprise Mainframe is the most powerful commercial IBM system ever. It includes up to 96 of the world's fastest, most powerful microprocessors, capable of executing more than 50 billion instructions per second.

This performance will accommodate HeiTech's business growth across the region and will be used to run workloads for HeiTech's customers across a range of industries including banking, finance and public sector. The new zEnterprise will be located at HeiTech's Tier IV Data Centre in the city of Shah Alam.

The new IBM zEnterprise System is the result of an investment of more than $1.5 billion in IBM research and development as well as more than three years of collaboration with some of IBM's top clients around the world.  It is also the first system capable of managing workloads running on the mainframe as well as select IBM Power and System x servers as a single virtualized system.

Dato' Mohd Hilmey Mohd Taib, Executive Chairman of HeiTech said, "With the current economic climate and other threats, it is now more important than ever for organisations to maintain operational effectiveness and flexibility while benefitting from one of the most powerful, secure and robust IT infrastructures on the market. The IBM zEnterprise opens up the possibility of hosting entire workloads on a single, highly-integrated system and is set to support HeiTech's customers which are running some of the most demanding and mission-critical applications on the planet."

The IBM zEnterprise System will support HeiTech's business growth plans over the next five years especially as it takes its services to other countries in the ASEAN market.  To do this, HeiTech will collaborate with IBM to offer this solution to interested customers in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. In Malaysia the system will be used to manage the huge databases of HeiTech's existing public sector customers. The new system will provide HeiTech Padu with a competitive differentiator in the market place and is further validation of its approach to managing service delivery.

"The new IBM zEnterprise System represents a bold move to fundamentally change how data centers are managed," said Ramanathan Sathiamutty, Managing Director, IBM Malaysia. "The new mainframe is the fastest enterprise server in the world and represents a giant leap forward in performance.  We are excited to partner with HeiTech Padu to provide the best infrastructure for their customers and help realize the company's vision of growth whilst improving performance."

Dato' Hilmey continued, "The IBM zEnterprise is the best solution ever to effortlessly support our customers' growing business needs. Our investment will benefit our customers by helping them achieve better business efficiency through an increased level of responsiveness, better value and higher customer satisfaction. Our customers can rest assured that their data will be managed efficiently, securely and cost effectively."