IBM Operating Systems
As an integrated operating system, IBM i database and middleware is built for retailers and prepares your retail business for growth. It is optimized for exceptional business resilience and non-disruptive growth on IBM Power Systems and scalable to support both small retailers and large chains. The IBM i operating system:
- Implements a service-oriented architecture
- Offers single-level storage
- Processes with stability and integrity
- Is optimized for non-disruptive growth on IBM Power servers
- Provides trusted security with auditing and compliance tools
- Furnishes exceptional infrastructure support for mobile devices
- Uses best-of-breed IBM development tools
- Exploits existing application assets with a range of open technologies
- Supports thousands of industry application solutions
- Simplifies operations and storage management
This open standards-based UNIX operating system delivers outstanding scalability, reliability, and manageability. It’s popular among retailers, particularly those requiring large-scale computing environments. Virtually every major retail software provider offers AIX-based solutions. AIX provides retail businesses with:
- An expanded share in the UNIX market
- Unmatched, highly scalable performance
- Increases server utilization
- Lowers energy costs
- Virtualization capabilities help consolidate workloads
- A secure IT environment integrates into an existing security infrastructure
- Premier UNIX operating system
- Compatibility from one release to the next so easy to upgrade
- Seamless migration from competitive UNIX platforms to a consolidated UNIX workload
Linux, which runs on an open-source foundation, is helping businesses worldwide realize the benefits of open-source software, including superior return on investment, greater operational flexibility and enhanced agility to grow mission-critical systems. IBM Power Systems support the industry-leading Red Hat, SUSE and Ubunta Linux distributions. Linux is:
- Affordable
- Interoperable
- Manageable
- Reliable
- Scalable
- Secure
IBM Databases
IBM’s DB2 for i helps retail businesses simplify and automate many of the tasks associated with deploying databases. As such, retailers free up skilled database administrator resources to focus on next-generation enterprise applications. This includes business intelligence, content management and information integration — and further lower their total cost of ownership. Notably, DB2 for i for IBM Power Systems was built into IBM i. Because of the tight integration between DB2 for i and IBM i, as well as the unique architecture of IBM i, many of the traditional database-specific administration requirements found on other database management systems either aren’t necessary or can be administered through IBM I facilities.
Oracle is the database of choice for IBM Power Systems. In fact, it is widely viewed by retailers as the premier database for large-scale computing environments. Oracle is known as a popular database for running online transaction processing, data warehousing and mixed database workloads. Subsequently, many of the most well-recognized retail software vendors showcase their products using the Oracle database and the IBM Power server.
The SQL Server, which runs on IBM Power Systems, provides retailers with a complete set of data management and analysis features. It also scales to support the largest websites, enterprise online transaction processing systems and data warehousing systems.