IBM Accelerates Availability of Critical Business Data With New Autonomic Software

Market Wire, September, 2004

IBM today announced the general availability of the industry's first software that automatically self-manages and self-tunes databases containing key business information without human intervention. As a result, businesses will be able to manage, process and retrieve key data -- such as customer history, product pricing and product availability -- faster, saving time and money.

The general availability of DB2 Universal Database, code-named Stinger, redefines the role of database administration. The software delivers breakthrough autonomic computing capabilities that allow organizations to complete complex jobs up to seven times faster than before while also reducing the time spent on administrative tasks by up to 65 percent.

For example, by utilizing the latest version of DB2, ScotDB Limited -- a leading database design and administration firm -- is now able to deliver a database product that manages itself 90 percent of the time. This represents a decisive advantage for ScottDB's smaller customers who typically have limited background in database administration and little or no technical support staff.

According to a report issued by industry analyst META Group, the introduction of autonomic capabilities into the database can reduce time-consuming tasks, such as problem solving, monitoring and tuning, by up to 80 percent. [1] DB2 addresses this key customer need by integrating autonomic features that provide an unmatched ability to reduce many of the labor-intensive and mundane assignments traditionally performed by database administrators (DBAs) freeing them to work on other projects such as application development and design.

Today's DB2 announcement marks the one-hundredth IBM product release that incorporate autonomic computing technologies. IBM leads the industry in autonomic computing and currently offers more than 415 autonomic technology features in 50 distinct IBM products.

Autonomic computing is the technology that is building self-managing IT infrastructures -- hardware and software that can configure, heal, optimize and protect itself. By taking care of many of the increasingly complex management requirements of IT systems, autonomic computing allows human and physical resources to concentrate on actual business issues.

Highlights of the new autonomic computing features include:

--  IBM Learning Optimizer (LEO) - a breakthrough technology that allows
    the database to "learn" from past experiences and accelerates searches by
    uncovering the fastest route to business information.
--  DB2 Design Advisor, a first-of-its kind standard feature that
    automatically designs and optimizes the database; enabling DBA's to
    complete query jobs nearly seven times faster than if done manually.
--  Automated Maintenance - a new feature that automatically performs
    administration and maintenance functions, such as table maintenance or data
    back-ups, reducing time spent on these tasks by up to 65 percent.
    

These industry-leading autonomic capabilities are helping organizations such as Klaas Brant Consulting & Education B.V. (KBCE Inc.) to reduce their client's database administration costs while cost-effectively managing growth.

"At KBCE we were impressed by DB2's new and unique autonomic computing features which will save a company time and money," said Klaas Brant, CEO of KBCE. "The database has now become self-healing and self-tuning, freeing up valuable DBA time. Routine tasks are now automated and the new advisory software assists DBAs to make the best decisions quickly and safely."

These new DB2 capabilities mean that involvement by a database administrator is no longer required to periodically refresh DB2's understanding of the data it is managing. The software now learns about changes in the data organization and adjusts its optimization strategies accordingly. DB2's LEO technology also continually updates query statistics about how the database is being used, where it keeps information and how it is performing. As a result, DB2 can now create and execute better plans for accessing data automatically and without prompting the DBA to take action.

Utilizing this breakthrough technology, searches for information that used to take days, will now take only seconds to execute. For example, a typical database might have 1,000 queries, 100 of which need a half-day's worth of tuning -- resulting in a 50-day delay. LEO's ability to learn and optimize itself will reduce that delay to two days, saving DBAs more than 48 days worth of tedious database tuning and significantly reducing the total cost of ownership for the organization.

With today's announcement, competing databases cannot match the level of sophistication and automation now available in DB2. For example, where other databases force DBAs to constantly tell the database how to optimize queries, which can be costly and time-consuming, the DB2 Learning Optimizer and Design Advisor tune the database on demand as the workload fluctuates, automating any changes to the database structure, as well as backups and restores.