Voltaire and IBM Expand OEM Partnership

Voltaire Ltd., a provider of scale-out data center fabrics, is expanding its existing partnership with IBM (News - Alert) and, eventually, IBM will now start selling Voltaire`s new 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches with IBM`s integrated System Cluster 1350 portfolio of products.

 

The two companies have been working together from 2004. With this recent announcement, IBM will now offer Voltaire`s Vantage 8500 switch, in addition to Voltaire`s 20 and 40 Gb/s InfiniBand platforms in the IBM System Cluster 1350 integrated portfolio. Additionally, IBM will also be offering Voltaire`s recently introduced Grid Director 4700, a 40 Gb/s QDR InfiniBand director switch.

 

According to company officials, this agreement will offer customers designing next generation, virtualized data centers and cloud environments, a complete system capable of delivering efficiency, scalability and performance, at significantly reduced costs.

 

“Our inclusion of Voltaire`s 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches in our Dynamic Infrastructure portfolio for System x is part of IBM`s ongoing strategy to give our customers more flexibility and choice of innovative networking solutions to address the growing demands on their IT environments,” Alex Yost, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group, said.

 

The Voltaire Vantage 8500 switch is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet, high-density Layer 2 core switch that is said to address the key networking requirements of virtualized, scale-out data centers. By clustering up to twelve Vantage 8500 switches together, a customer can expand their data center to many thousands of servers while preserving the same efficiency and price-per-port, without degrading the performance or latency like traditional hierarchical network designs.

 

“IBM`s decision to offer Voltaire`s new Ethernet switches is a testament to the unique value these products bring to scale-out, virtualized data centers,” Ronnie Kenneth, CEO and chairman at Voltaire, said.