FRANKFURT, Germany, March 11 — IBM today announced that Black Point Arts Internet Solutions GmbH would expand its Cloud infrastructure using IBM Flex Systems. Black Point Arts will also use IBM City Cloud, an initiative designed specifically to help Managed Service Providers (MSPs) quickly deliver new services and products for their midmarket clients.

IBM City Cloud, initially offered in Germany beginning in March of 2012, allows IBM business partners to run their own data center and offer cloud services to their midmarket customers on IBM solutions. With more than 50 city cloud partners in Germany, the program has proven so successful that it is already being offered in Austria with plans to expand to other countries. IBM City Cloud is not a single product but a program that includes a variety of offerings from IBM and its business partners that can be tailored to meet the needs of partners in different countries and regions.

As one of the first IBM Business Partners in Germany to adopt IBM Flex Systems, Black Point Arts has been able to extend its range of IT services and offer customers better and more flexible services from the City Cloud. Flex System offers high efficiency and simplified administration and provides an ideal platform for their entire IT process.

"We have about 50 customers in the Rhine-Main region who rely on our IT services from the City Cloud. In order to support our customers with flexible and high-performance IT services, we must meet the challenges related to the use, management and administration of our servers," said Dirk Estenfeld, CEO Black Point Arts. "Therefore, we have expanded our data center with IBM Flex Systems. This also leaves additional resources for other projects."

Black Point Arts offers a local and high-performance data center which is equipped according to German safety standards and builds the foundation for the City Cloud in the Rhine-Main area. The existing IBM system x and IBM Storwize storage systems have now been extended to include the IBM Flex Systems. The new Flex System gives Black Point Arts twelve slots allowing for a rapid expansion of the range of virtual servers especially middle class customers will benefit from. These make use of the extended range of IT services to save investment costs in hardware, software and services.

IBM Flex Systems allows Black Point Arts to select computing, network and the optional storage as well as management components modularly so that the specific workloads are optimally supported. This not only provides investment protection, but also saves energy and space. Additionally, the IBM Flex Systems Manager facilitates the overall system management and centralizes the administration via an easy-to-use interface.

IBM Flex Systems go beyond competitor's blade configurations and provide the building-block elements for IBM PureSystems.  IBM Flex Systems are built-to-order offerings for clients who want to custom build and tune configurations to their specific requirements. This allows them to select the specific compute, systems networking and optional storage and management required to support their specific workloads.

"Above all, small businesses who want to upgrade their server and storage technology will not and cannot invest too many resources for new systems," says Martina Fiddrich, Director of Sales Midmarket and Partnership Solution Center of IBM in Germany. "Black Point Arts as a medium-sized IT service provider shows how to create added value for their company and their customer with little resources."

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Source: IBM