IBM recently announced the introduction of the IBM Balanced Warehouse, and there have been a few questions about this and how it is related to the BCU (Balanced Configuration Unit) and our recent Dynamic Warehousing announcement, so I thought I'd try to explain what it is...and what it isn't. Let's start off with a quick recap on Dynamic Warehousing.
Dynamic Warehousing is about providing extended capabilities and infrastructure to enable third generation BI, which can be used to improve real time business processes and create competitive advantage. DB2 Warehouse is at the heart of IBM's solution for Dynamic Warehousing with its unique "best of both worlds" architecture that provides the benefits of an OLTP based, transactional data server, along with dedicated warehousing capabilities that enable it to better handle larger data volumes and more complex queries and analytics. This, along with the embedded analytics and support for extracting knowledge from unstructured information, make it the ideal platform for dynamic warehousing.
The IBM Balanced Warehouse is something completely orthogonal, and a new set of offerings that can be leveraged to simplify and optimize deployments of Dynamic Warehousing through an appliance like approach. It is the evolution of our BCU methodology to provide greater simplicity and supportability, additional entry points for more flexibility, and optimized performance by combining IBM hardware, storage and software as all encompassing, out-of-the-box building blocks that can be used to address an organization's enterprise wide or departmental warehousing requirements.
The IBM Balanced Warehouse comes pre-configured, pre-tested and pre-certified. It can be considered an appliance with benefits and there are several advantages to this solution. In addition to the drastic reduction in deployment time, we have found that a majority of customer problems or performance concerns with their warehouse are a result of configuration issues - most of which we have found to be resolved when customers deploy an IBM Balanced Warehouse. In addition to the resulting reduction in support issues, IBM Balanced Warehouse customers get a single number for complete solution support - hardware, storage and software. However, unlike most appliances, IBM provides multiple offerings that can address the entire spectrum of data warehousing needs - from large enterprise data warehouses, to high performance, departmental data marts, to packaged data warehouse solutions for small and medium sized businesses.
The IBM Balanced Warehouse actually came out of our initial efforts to provide customers with a methodology for deploying individual warehouse server nodes - balanced configuration units (BCUs). There have been several customers that have taken our BCU methodology and customized it to match their existing hardware and/or storage assets. This methodology helps them reduce the overall deployment time, but was just an initial step. Customers purchasing a true IBM Balanced Warehouse experience even greater reduction of support issues, and benefit from having a pre-configured, pre-tested solution.
There are currently a lot of companies that have leveraged the BCU methodology, but are not necessarily "IBM Balanced Warehouse" customers - mainly because the BCU methodology has been around longer than the IBM Balanced Warehouse. However, we expect this trend to change.
Of course, we recognize that some customers will continue to have biases towards certain infrastructure components, and we will continue in true IBM fashion to maintain openness and support alternative hardware and storage devices. However, customers should clearly understand the additional value and benefits of a "true" IBM Balanced Warehouse.
