Merrill Lynch To Use IBM’s Cloud for Risk Analytics

Merrill Lynch, which is in the process of being acquired by Bank of America, has signed up to use IBM's new System x iDataPlex servers to build and evaluate new risk-analysis programs.

iDataPlex is built for stateless computing that turns many separate computers into a pool of shared resources or "cloud."

"Our goal is to rapidly adopt technologies like iDataPlex that reduce the power consumption within our data centers," said Jeffrey M. Birnbaum, chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch. "iDataPlex is a perfectly positioned platform for this new style of computing -- giving us the ability to pack a lot more compute power into smaller, less expensive package and minimize power and cooling costs. iDataPlex technology combined with a stateless computing model allows Merrill Lynch to optimize data center efficiency."

iDataPlex is part of IBM's "Blue Cloud" initiative, a set of hardware, software and services that allows IBM clients to offer personal and business services from remote, centralized servers, the "cloud," that share computing resources and bandwidth -- to any device, anywhere.