IBM Signs $1.4 Billion Global Strategic Outsourcing Agreement With AstraZeneca

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that they have signed a $1.4 billion, seven-year global strategic outsourcing agreement with AstraZeneca. The agreement renews and expands on the scope of an existing contract and covers the provision of IT infrastructure services to 60 countries. It includes services to additional functions within AstraZeneca, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.


In the terms of the agreement, IBM will provide a single global technical infrastructure, managing IT services for AstraZeneca across its global organisation. This includes server and storage hosting, service desks, PC management, network and communications services, including e-mail, and computer operations support. AstraZeneca will retain control of its overall IT strategy and the development and support of its application systems.

Richard Williams, Chief Information Officer of AstraZeneca, said, "This innovative agreement with IBM will enable AstraZeneca to deliver greater value to the business by providing consistent infrastructure services globally, enabling a faster and more efficient rollout of new technology, with improved levels of service. Leveraging IBM's global delivery capabilities and economies of scale, will allow AstraZeneca to focus its efforts on adding value to its scientific, commercial and supply operations, thereby helping the Company to deliver more medicines that make a meaningful difference to patients. In allowing IBM greater autonomy on methods of delivery, the agreement will result in cost efficiencies when compared with running in-house systems."

"IBM will marshal its global resources to provide a flexible and agile infrastructure enabling AstraZeneca to continue implementing its plans to grow and lead in the pharmaceutical industry," said Doug Elix, Senior Vice President, IBM. "The trust we have built over the past seven years will help IBM and AstraZeneca break new ground in transformational services in the next seven."

The agreement was signed in July 2007.

About IBM
For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies with healthcare sales of $26.47 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory, oncology and infection products. AstraZeneca is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (Global) as well as the FTSE4 Good Index.

IBM Contributes Software That Predicts Spread of Emerging Infectious Diseases

IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced that it has made available an advanced software technology that can help predict the transmission of diseases across countries and around the globe to the open source community. The tool will aid scientists and public health officials in understanding and planning more efficient responses to health crises, ultimately providing new tools for protecting population health.

The software, known as Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM), is now available for use through the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework Project (OHF), hosted at the Eclipse Foundation, the non-profit foundation that guides the Eclipse open source community.

STEM represents nearly three years of research spanning the globe with scientists from IBM’s Almaden, Haifa and Watson labs contributing to its creation. The technology is designed to enable the rapid creation of epidemiological models for how an infectious disease, such as avian influenza or dengue fever, is likely to geographically spread over time. STEM, which runs on any operating system, creates a graphical representation of the spread of a disease based on a variety of parameters such as population, geographic and macro-economic data, roadmaps, airport locations, travel patterns and bird migratory routes around the world.

“STEM will allow public health officials to model the spread of a disease much like modeling a storm or hurricane – it allows us to produce a public health 'weather map' for the spread of a particular disease,” said Joseph Jasinski, IBM Distinguished Engineer and program director, Healthcare and Life Sciences. “Until now, it has been difficult to simulate health crisis scenarios on a global scale. STEM gives us the power to do that.”

A basic epidemiological model framework will be provided to software developers, who can customize and configure the models based on their specific requirements. These models, which involve multiple populations and interactions between diseases, can help public health experts develop more effective preparedness plans. IBM’s donation is also intended to help facilitate collaboration between governments, scientific researchers and other players in the public health community. Users will have the ability to share the customized epidemiological models that they create in addition to the plug-ins they build using Eclipse.

STEM is one of the key technologies being utilized in the Global Pandemic Initiative, a collaborative effort formed by IBM and over twenty major worldwide public health institutions to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. The tool is also compatible with the standards-based interoperable healthcare infrastructure developed by IBM and can query clinics, hospitals, lab systems and other information sources for anonymized data by disease, which enables a complete picture of the health of a population with real-time data.

“Eclipse is a community that promotes innovation and collaboration,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director, Eclipse Foundation. ‘We are thrilled to have IBM’s STEM technology contributed to Eclipse and look forward to fostering more innovation on this important technology.”

To download STEM, please go to: http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/components/stem/

For more information about IBM, go to: www.ibm.com

IBM, Chartered and Samsung Extend Integrated DFM Support for Common Platform Technology to 45 nanometer

As the Common PlatformTM technology alliance, IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd. today announced the availability of design-for-manufacturing (DFM) technology models, data files and design kits from leading EDA and DFM companies, supporting Common Platform technology at 45 nanometer (nm). This is the second node, following 65nm, where the alliance partners have driven comprehensive DFM solutions, which marry technology and tool support from leading EDA and DFM suppliers with manufacturing data and models from the Common Platform technology foundries to help ensure the success of chip designs at this advanced technology node across all three manufacturers’ fabs.

The Common Platform technology alliance is exhibiting this week in booth #2460 at the 44th annual Design Automation Conference in San Diego, Calif.

“Our goal is to enable our customers to make informed decisions about design tradeoffs which for today’s leading-edge technologies include manufacturability,” said Ana Molnar Hunter, vice president of technology, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “At 45nm, DFM is integral in linking design, process flow, and manufacturing, giving designers more control and predictability over the outcome for robust variation-aware designs.”

The 45nm DFM offering for Common Platform technology supports a wide range of capabilities, which address the critical manufacturing-related issues from design to mask making. While continuing to support existing capabilities from multiple companies previously announced at 65nm, the Common Platform companies have enabled additional tools, including DFM tools from Mentor Graphics that perform critical area analysis (CAA) and critical feature analysis (CFA) and a silicon-validated CMP Predictor from Cadence Design Systems.

The move to 45nm requires even greater cooperation across multiple tool suppliers, and to address this challenge and better serve customers, the Common Platform companies are driving unprecedented industry collaboration and integration of design solutions and are demonstrating cross-vendor tool integration at DAC.

About the Common Platform

IBM, Chartered and Samsung Electronics have broken new ground in the semiconductor industry with a unique collaboration focused on leading-edge, jointly developed digital CMOS process technologies and advanced manufacturing. The Common Platform model is further supported by a comprehensive ecosystem of design enablement and implementation partners from the EDA, IP and design services industries. This ecosystem allows foundry customers to source their chip designs to multiple 300mm foundries with minimal design work, unprecedented flexibility and choice. The Common Platform model features 90nm, 65nm, 45nm and 32nm technologies. For more information on the Common Platform, visit www.commonplatform.com

About IBM

For more information about semiconductors, please visit www.ibm.com/chips

About Chartered

Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing (Nasdaq:CHRT) (SGX-ST:CHARTERED), one of the world’s top dedicated semiconductor foundries, offers leading-edge technologies down to 65 nanometer (nm), enabling today’s system-on-chip designs. The company further serves the needs of customers through its collaborative, joint development approach on a technology roadmap that extends to 32nm. Chartered’s strategy is based on open and comprehensive design enablement solutions, manufacturing enhancement methodologies, and a commitment to flexible sourcing. In Singapore, the company operates a 300mm fabrication facility and four 200mm facilities. Information about Chartered can be found at www.charteredsemi.com

About Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2006 parent company sales of US$63.4 billion and net income of US$8.5 billion. Employing approximately 138,000 people in over 124 offices in 56 countries, the company consists of five main business units: Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business, Telecommunication Network Business and Digital Appliance Business. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com

IBM Milestone Brings MRI Technology to the Nanoscale

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that researchers at its Almaden Research Center have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to visualize nanoscale objects. This technique brings MRI capability to the nanoscale level for the first time and represents a major milestone in the quest to build a microscope that could "see" individual atoms in three dimensions.

Using Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy (MRFM), IBM researchers have demonstrated two-dimensional imaging of objects as small as 90 nanometers, a key advancement on the path of 3D imaging at the atomic scale. Such imaging could ultimately provide a better understanding of how proteins function, which in turn may lead to more efficient drug discovery and development.


“Our ultimate goal is to perform three-dimensional imaging of complex structures such as molecules with atomic resolution,” said Dan Rugar, manager, Nanoscale Studies, IBM Research. “This would allow scientists to study the atomic structures of molecules -- such as proteins -- which would represent a huge breakthrough in structural molecular biology."


MRFM offers imaging sensitivity that is 60,000 times better than current magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. MRFM uses what is known as force detection to overcome the sensitivity limitations of conventional MRI to view structures that would otherwise be too small to be detected.


To achieve this, the research team developed specialized magnetic tips for their microscope, optimizing their ability to manipulate and detect the very weak magnetism of atomic nuclei. Conventional medical MRI typically operates on a scale at least 1,000 times coarser; even the most specialized MRI microscopy is limited to about 3 micrometers, or 3,000 nanometers.


This achievement could eventually have major impact on the study of materials -- ranging from proteins and pharmaceuticals to integrated circuits -- for which a detailed understanding of the atomic structure is essential. Knowing the exact location of specific atoms within tiny nanoelectronic structures, for example, would enhance designers' insight into manufacture and performance. The ability to directly image the detailed atomic structure of proteins would aid the development of new drugs.


For more than a decade, IBM researchers have been making pioneering advancements in MRFM. With this latest achievement, the team is now able to make images with as few as 103 atoms as opposed to the 108 atoms required to make an image with today’s MRI technology. This improved sensitivity extends MRI into the nanometer realm. (The nanometer realm is typically considered to be at dimensions below 100 nanometers; a nanometer is a billionth of a meter, the length spanned by about 5-10 atoms.)

IBM Research has a distinguished history in developing microscopes for nanoscale imaging and science. Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer of IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention of the scanning tunneling microscope, which can image individual atoms on electrically conducting surfaces.

The report on this work, “Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging with 90-nm resolution,” by H. J. Mamin1, M. Poggio1,2, C. L. Degen1 and D. Rugar1 at IBM Research Division1, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California and the Center for Probing the Nanoscale, Stanford University2 will appear in the April 22 issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

About the IBM Research Division
IBM Research is the world's largest information technology research organization, with about 3,000 scientists and engineers in eight labs in six countries. IBM has produced more research breakthroughs than any other company in the IT industry. For more information on IBM Research, visit http://www.research.ibm.com

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Boosts Efficiency and Cost Savings With IBM Virtualization Technology

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) today announced that the medical center's deployment of IBM virtualization technologies is saving significant IT infrastructure costs and improving productivity, while maintaining high service levels. Virtualization allows customers to increase efficiency by dividing a server into smaller parts or by pooling smaller, individual machines so they can perform as one larger system.

UPMC, a $6 billion integrated health care enterprise, is the largest employer in western Pennsylvania and one of the most renowned academic medical centers in the United States. With 43,000 employees, it comprises 19 hospitals, a network of other care sites, an insurance division, and international and commercial ventures. The IBM virtualization effort is enabling UPMC to accelerate the implementation of its electronic health record system across its extensive network while developing more powerful clinical tools to enhance patient care.

UPMC is a national leader in implementing electronic medical records. The large amount of information generated by these systems requires a powerful, flexible IT infrastructure and an enterprise-wide approach to effectively manage storage, computers, memory, network bandwidth and disk input/output. As a result, UPMC is in the process of replacing HP and Sun Microsystems technology with IBM to create an on-demand data center. UPMC's new data center includes IBM servers, storage and software that feature industry-leading virtualization technology to consolidate and simplify the management of its IT infrastructure.

"Virtualization isn't an option, it's a necessity," said Paul Sikora, vice president of IT Transformation at UPMC. "Considering that IBM and UPMC are only midway through this transformation project, the results have been impressive. We have already proven that standardization, along with aggressive implementation of virtualization, yields unprecedented productivity and efficiency."

In the last five months, UPMC has begun to use the virtualization capabilities built into IBM's AIX operating system. As a result, the same staff is supporting 150 percent more server capacity, while the amount of space required for the servers has been reduced by almost 40 percent. This was made possible by standardizing on IBM hardware and operating system and fully utilizing IBM's and VMware's virtualization technology.

In the first of a four-phase benchmarking study commissioned by UPMC, Health Industry Insights, an IDC company, estimated that savings already identified in the IT transformation project will conservatively range from $18 million to $22 million over the next three years. That includes costs avoided for new hardware, maintenance, floor space and staffing.

"As the enabling technologies mature, server virtualization is rapidly moving from leading edge to mainstream in many industries. But in health care, there are still very few cases of successful early adoption on the scale of UPMC's effort," said Marc Holland, Health Industry Insights program director of provider IT research. "We believe that there are significant economic benefits to be achieved from virtualization, and this landmark effort is one that other provider organizations should closely monitor."

"Companies are continuously evolving, and we are constantly striving to provide our customers with the most innovative technology to meet business needs," said Rich Lechner, vice president, virtualization at IBM. "UPMC is a prime example, leveraging IBM's virtualization technology to deliver innovation that matters to quickly adapt to a changing market, provide high availability for every application and save administration time. UPMC's experience is a testament to the business benefits that can be achieved through the implementation of a virtualized, dynamic infrastructure."

UPMC is using IBM virtualized servers and storage, as well as IBM management tools to help simplify the management of the total infrastructure. The most recent virtualization deployment is on UPMC's UNIX systems. The UNIX applications were migrated to AIX and standardized on four IBM System p5 595 servers. To accommodate the new application for outpatient electronic health records and stay within budget constraints, UPMC used IBM's Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV) for the majority of its System p5 servers to more effectively utilize the available processors. APV allows micro-partitioning to share adjustable fractions of a CPU across partitions, as well as a dynamic load distribution across the CPUs and memory.

For its Intel-based servers, UPMC will deploy VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 to consolidate more than a thousand physical servers to just 20 IBM System x servers. By leveraging virtualization technology, UPMC will consolidate more than 50 virtual servers on each physical Intel-based server. The end result will be significantly improved manageability and system uptime for application users. In 18 months, when this transformation is complete, the utilization rates of the servers are expected to increase from the current average of 3 percent per server to nearly 80 percent. The consolidation effort is also designed to reduce costs while enabling better service to the end users of Linux and Windows applications.

Already, UPMC has consolidated its storage infrastructure into three enterprise-wide storage pools through the use of IBM's storage virtualization solution, SAN Volume Controller (SVC). SVC has significantly increased utilization, flexibility and management.

To help simplify management of virtualized servers across the system, UPMC has chosen IBM's Systems Director Family of products. UPMC is one of the leading organizations that is integrating its physical and virtual platform management -- server, storage and network management -- and then deploying a unified enterprise software layer on top with IBM Service Management offerings from Tivoli.

For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com

For more information on UPMC, visit http://www.upmc.com

IBM and University of Washington to Demonstrate Computer Entertainment Technology for Medical Imaging Use

At the upcoming "Workshop on Solving Computational Challenges in Medical Imaging," IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the University of Washington will show how next-generation technology currently featured in computer entertainment and video-processing platforms is driving advancements in medical imaging.

Demonstrating the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell/B.E) processor in medical imaging applications, IBM Global Engineering Solutions and the University of Washington will reveal performance results utilizing Cell/B.E. for several compute-intensive image/signal processing algorithms including ultrasound improvements. With the higher image quality and faster results achieved through the Cell/B.E., there is great potential for new, clinically beneficial applications not previously possible.

In addition to highlighting ultrasound applications, the workshop will focus on other computational challenges in medical imaging that can now be addressed through this new class of microprocessors.

The revolutionary Cell/B.E. is a breakthrough design featuring a central processing core based on IBM's industry-leading Power Architecture™ technology and eight synergistic processing elements (SPE). Cell/B.E. "supercharges" compute-intensive applications, offering fast performance for computer entertainment and handhelds, virtual reality, wireless downloads, real-time video chat, interactive TV shows and other "image-hungry" computing environments. The groundbreaking Cell/B.E. processor appears in products such as Sony Computer Entertainment's PLAYSTATION®3 and Toshiba's Cell/B.E. Reference Set, a development tool for Cell/B.E. products, as well as the IBM BladeCenter QS20. It is also embedded in custom Cell/B.E. based offerings from IBM Global Engineering Solutions.

IBM is also currently hosting a first of its kind programming contest on Cell/B.E -- the Cell University Challenge -- for college and university students in 25 different countries, offering cash prizes and awards for the most innovative applications of the breakthrough Cell/B.E. All information on eligibility, rules and requirements, and entry applications can be found at: http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/students/contests/cell/index.html

The IBM - University of Washington workshop will take place July 23-24 on the University of Washington campus in the Foege Auditorium. For more information and to register, please visit http://icsl.washington.edu/miworkshop/index.html

IBM, Power Architecture are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

"PLAYSTATION" is a registered trademark and "Cell Broadband Engine" is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.

IBM Announces Production of Cell Chip at 65nm

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that the company has begun producing a new, 65 nanometer (nm) version of the Cell Broadband Engine at IBM's state-of-the-art East Fishkill, New York microchip production facility.

The revolutionary Cell chip, jointly developed by IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba, is effectively a supercomputer-on-a-chip, providing breakthrough performance for consumer electronics, medical imaging, design engineering and other graphics-intensive applications. In addition to serving as the digital heartbeat of Sony Computer Entertainment’s PLAYSTATION®3, the chip also appears in IBM’s BladeCenter servers.

A team of computer scientists from IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba has collaborated on the development of the Cell microprocessor at a joint design center established in Austin, Texas, since March 2001.

About IBM
For more information about IBM microchip technologies, please visit http://www.ibm.com/chips