IBM Helps Black Point Arts Provide Faster IT Services Through City Cloud

IBM Corporation
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 MSPs deliver new services and products for their
mid-market 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 mid-market customers on IBM
solutions. With more than 50 City Cloud partners in Germany, the program has
proven successful and is being offered in Austria with plans to
expand to other countries. It 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 Flex Systems, Black Point Arts has been able to extend
its IT services and offer customers better and more flexible services
from the City Cloud. Flex System offers efficiency and simplified
administration and provides a 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 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 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.

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 Flex Systems Manager facilitates the overall system
management and centralizes the administration via an easy-to-use interface.

Flex Systems go beyond competitor’s
blade configurations and provide the building-block elements for IBM
PureSystems. They 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 mid-market 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."