In March 2021, Lenovo announced new offerings that provide new ways for clients to accelerate computing with their Lenovo TruScale Services, which enables flexible consumption of server resources. The purpose of this launch was to accelerate real-time insights from the edge to the cloud; incorporate eighteen new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile systems in the portfolio by expanding AMD’s family of third generation EPYC microprocessors, including eight new ThinkSystem V2 servers updated with third generation Intel Xeon scalable processors; and deliver ready-to-deploy analytics and AI offerings with SAS edge analytics, city security AI with Addfor, and scalable machine learning with cnvrg.io.
Lenovo Extending End-to-end Computing
During the briefing, Kamran Amini, Vice President & General Manager for Server, Storage & Software Defined Infrastructure and Scott Tease, General Manager for HPC and AI at Lenovo, provided an in-depth explanation of how Lenovo is poised to extend its reach in the end-to-end portfolio.
With the introduction and expansion of cloud computing, edge computing, analytics & AI, and as-a-service, Lenovo TruScale now provides Lenovo with:
- Open standards.
- Simplified management.
- Workload optimization.
- ThinkShield security.
These features combined with Lenovo TruScale, professional service and expertise, expand Lenovo’s end-to-end compute portfolio.
As-a-service, Edge-to-cloud, and Multiple Workloads
With the rapid move to as-a-service consumption, Lenovo is driving and capitalizing on this approach by offering customers new options. These new delivery options are focused not only on consumption, but also designed to add greater depth to the portfolio. With this launch, Lenovo customers can improve operational efficiencies with the latest data center hardware and support, combined with the flexibility of the pay-as-you-go consumption model using Lenovo’s TruScale Infrastructure Services.
This approach offers potentially more value to customers with the ability to leverage real-world insights from thousands of digital transformation initiatives across the IT lifecycle. This, combined with the option to deliver new designs, deployments, and data migration tools, can provide the insights to overcome business challenges. These challenges are often amplified at the data center core to the edge and to cloud deployments. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX with Nutanix provides a purpose-built option to extend hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) benefits from the data center to the edge. This addition extends visibility into real-time analytics at the edge, often where the data is being created. Remote management is expanded to offer a holistic view across the infrastructure ecosystem by providing a single control point to provision and manage multiple edge clusters.
With increasing workloads, this launch also extends the support for SAP HANA by consolidating on the ThinkAgile VX HCI platform, Amini states. This additional functionality simplifies deployment and lifecycle management of workloads.
Next-generation Servers Come to Life!
This launch introduces an expansion to the server portfolio for Lenovo. The innovation from Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile solutions are extended with the third generation AMD EPYC processors. This addition has the potential to provide an increase in generational performance for improved return on investment as well as faster insights for workload performance.
ThinkShield has also been extended to increase and ensure security in the product offerings and specifically calls out supply chain and manufacturing processes. This focus is on improvements combined with the Lenovo platform root of trust, platform firmware resiliency, and updated server component imaging.
Lenovo is innovating and evolving in tandem with its customers. This launch promises new ways to provide flexible consumption with Lenovo TruScale; safeguard IT with the additions to ThinkShield, accelerating insights across the hybrid cloud data center; and simplify edge-to-cloud management and orchestration. Some of the additional innovations include Lenovo’s Neptune cooling and Lenovo XClarity insights—providing clients new ways to optimize cooling and expand visibility into data center resources and drive business results.
Adding the ready-to-deploy analytics and AI offerings, Lenovo has enabled customers and partners to bring new AI solutions to the enterprise. For example, partners such as SAS now have the ability to deliver edge AI insights and cnvrg.io can now provide end-to-end machine learning across the ecosystem.
AI has also been expanded in use cases such as CrowdHEDGE for security monitoring. This Lenovo partnership with Addfor provides a city security solution and enables tracking of metrics for use cases such as foot traffic, crowd size, and percentages of people wearing masks. The use cases for this type of solution can be expanded a number of ways to ensure proper monitoring of a variety of scenarios.
Summing It Up
To summarize, Lenovo added as-a-service, new advisory services, 18 new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile edge-to-cloud offerings, and ready-to-deploy analytics and AI solutions with this release.
These new offerings are interesting because they address customer and partner challenges. How the market landscape will respond to this launch and how customers will react to alternative offerings remains to be seen. If you want to learn more, let’s talk and explore how Lenovo and the market landscape is addressing your business challenges.
