I like Lego. Always have. We had a load of bricks when I was growing up and I built loads of robots, spaceships and other models. Now I have children of my own and I get to build Lego sets with them too.
I built the Lego Millennium Falcon with my eldest, which took a good few hours. She took it through to show her cousin, tripped, dropped it, and sent bits all over the place. So we built it again which was still a pleasure.
For me, I see similarities between Lego and what we do in IBM. Lego bricks are the elements I want to use for building models and IBM Power Systems are building blocks with which we can build solutions for our customers.
Lego blocks are tough, as you will know if you have ever stood on one. They have built towers (the latest one was in Milan last month) up to 115ft tall. However, Lego elements are so strong that it has been calculated that you could build a tower up to 3,591m consisting of 375,000 bricks before the pressure of the tower would squash the bricks at the bottom.
Lego elements are created to a standard that I consider to be much higher than the competitive toys that are now available and look similar. In the same way, I consider IBM Power Systems are built to satisfy the requirements of the most demanding of workloads, delivering superior results than our competition.
Let me take you through some of the ways I see Lego and IBM Power Systems as similar.
- HeritageHeritage
- R&DR&D
- Market leadershipMarket leadership
- ReliabilityReliability
- SecuritySecurity
- ManufacturingManufacturing
Lego
- Heritage>50 years
- R&DConstant focus to remain current. In the past, Lego was struggling to sell as many elements as they used to, so moved to selling kits. This has been very successful.
- Market leadershipLego is doing really well, recently becoming the largest toy manufacturer in the world, with a revenue of ~$4.4B. Their CEO is dancing to the “Everything is awesome!” song from the movie: http://bit.ly/1Cke25G.
- ReliabilityLego has a really reliable build process. For every million elements it creates, only ~18 fail its stringent quality control tests. All the Lego I have ever built with looks and works just as I would expect it to (http://bit.ly/1H6GtzX).
- SecurityFor Lego, I take security to be how well the elements stick together, using “clutch power”. The elements are made to a tolerance of 0.002mm, to ensure they can stick together and be separated when needed (http://bit.ly/1UvG3gM).
- ManufacturingLego creates around 20 billion elements every year. In fact, with a production of about 306 million tyres a year, the Lego Group is the world’s largest tyre manufacturer (http://bit.ly/1UvG3gM).
IBM Power Systems
- Heritage>50 years (borrowing from the mainframe heritage of IBM Power Systems – the same architect who created PR/SM virtualisation on System z, James W. Rymarczyk, also created PowerVM virtualisation on IBM Power Systems)
- R&DIBM Power Systems is also shifting from a focus on the servers to solutions, like the Business Analytics Accelerator and IBM Data Engine for Analytics (see here). Part of that is the $1B investment on Linux on Power. A further $2.4B was invested to create the POWER8 processor (see here). And there is a $3 billion investment in the future technology for processors (see here).
- Market leadershipThe POWER5 processor was created, with a combination of virtualisation and performance, to take on the offerings from Sun and HP. IBM Power Systems won that battle, becoming the top Unix vendor. POWER8 is built to take on Intel (http://bit.ly/1EUpqC).
- ReliabilityIBM Power Systems are built around an excellent heritage of delivering exceptional reliability, availability and serviceability. POWER8 has 6500 checkers in the processor to catch problems before they cause outages. Intel has around 50. Power Systems also avoid planned outages, with features like Power on Reset Engine, which allows most firmware updates to be applied without needing a reboot (details for POWER7: http://ibm.co/1Hab3c0; and for POWER8: http://ibm.co/1UvFN16.)
- SecurityFor IBM Power Systems, AIX, IBM i and PowerVM all have minimal security vulnerabilities published against them. Beyond that, PowerSC can monitor and report on security compliance (http://ibm.co/1bPur1p).
- ManufacturingPOWER processors are manufactured by GlobalFoundries, which is part of the Common Platform Alliance with Samsung. GlobalFoundries creates chips for the Internet of Things (IoT) along with other solutions. Samsung is the largest supplier of smart phones, selling 83.2m smartphones globally in the first quarter of 2015. POWER processors are created on the same lines as the other chips created by the members of the Common Platform, giving volume and keeping down costs. IBM’s involvement in the alliance is to share IP about future chip technologies.
What bricks does Lego use to run its business? Components from IBM, including IBM Power Systems, of course! To quote Esben Viskum, senior director of Lego’s service center: “Due to the architecture and design of the cloud-based Lego Matrix, I.T. is not a bottleneck on growth.”
So, to conclude, when building models I would always use Lego as I believe it delivers against my requirements for the models my children and I build. For business solutions, I believe IBM Power Systems are excellent choices to use as components in your solutions, interconnected with software and other infrastructure that may also come from IBM. This is because they can deliver superior results against the competition for the workloads today’s businesses require.
Want to know more? Come and ask me, and follow me on Twitter.
David Spurway is IBM Power Systems Product Manager for UK and Ireland. You can contact him at david.spurway@uk.ibm.com.
Twitter: @D_Spurway
