IBM unveils powerful servers in India

Global IT major IBM Monday unveiled its most powerful mainframe servers here to meet the growing requirements of India's mobile economy.

Touted to be the most secure system ever built, the US-based company's z13 servers are capable of processing 2.5 billion transactions a day and provide real-time transaction insights 17 times faster than other computer systems at a fraction of cost.

"The z13 mainframe delivers scale and economics with real-time encrypting and analytics to ensure speed and safety for trillions of transactions in the mobile economy," IBM's India subsidiary said in a statement here.

The company has invested $1 billion in developing the new system in five years, collaborating with 60 clients and creating about 500 patents during its innovation.

"The z13 is the first system to make practical real-time encryption of all mobile transactions and help protect the transaction data with security features built into it," the statement noted.

With the rapid growth of mobile applications, consumers expect transactions to be fast and seamless on any mobile payment platform, retailer, or financial organization providing the service.

"In a booming market like India where businesses need immediacy and security, there was a need of a computing infrastructure for the mobile generation and the new app economy which could redefine digital business," IBM India country leader for server solutions Viswanath Ramaswamy said.

As mobile adoption grows, consumers are driving exponentially larger numbers of mobile transactions. Each of these transactions triggers a cascade of events across computing systems.

These events include comparisons to past purchases, data encryption and decryption, bank-to-bank reconciliations and customer loyalty discounts.

"The cascade of events causes a astarburst effect' where a single transaction can trigger four or 100 additional system interactions and create security vulnerabilities at each interaction point," Ramaswamy said.

A company survey of chief information officers and IT managers indicated that security was a major challenge in mobile enterprise.

"With data and transactions under constant threat from multiple points of attack, consumers want to know that their mobile transactions are as secure as financial data held by banks, Ramaswamy added.