Egenera Inc., a global leader in utility computing, today announced that the Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology (SCBIT), a public research and development agency of the Shanghai government, has chosen the Egenera(R) system to run Web-based, user-facing applications that search scientific and technical data. Egenera, selected over legacy servers for its simplicity, openness and utility computing capabilities, is slated for deployment in cities throughout China.

"The new public service platform consists of more than 10 sub-systems running various applications. Because these applications are complex, mission-critical and frequently modified, a virtualized, easily managed platform was needed," said Dr. Yixue Li, director of Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology. "Egenera's integrated system of hardware and software met all of the requirements needed to achieve our vision."

The new service platform, which will support resource management and information consolidation along with database applications, is a high priority for the Shanghai government and serves as a model across China. Already, as many as 10 cities throughout the country are planning similar deployments to reap the advantages of Egenera technology, including:

Utility computing: The Egenera architecture provides the flexible allocation and resource repurposing that SCBIT requires. Since Egenera Processing Blade(TM) modules are stateless and anonymous, the agency can run any of the service platform's 10-plus applications on any blade at any time, based on demand.

Simplicity: SCBIT was impressed by the physical simplicity of the Egenera system, which consolidates connections to power, networks and storage. Moreover, through virtualization, Egenera has replaced 80 percent of the hardware components on a legacy server with software equivalents, lowering costs and improving reliability by eliminating failure points.

Open architecture: The Egenera system's ability to run Linux(R), Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Sun(R) Solaris(TM) simultaneously on a single machine was a major factor in the purchase decision.

Reliability: Designed for enterprise datacenters, the Egenera system provides full redundancy of all components, both hardware and software, with no single point of failure. Disaster recovery of complete Egenera platforms across locations will also be achieved with Egenera's unique N+1 approach.

Server consolidation: At SCBIT, Egenera technology reduced server count while simultaneously increasing processing capacity. Legacy architectures evaluated could not achieve both consolidation and reliability for the agency's mission-critical applications.

Performance: The Egenera solution has a remarkable synergy with Oracle(R) 10g, SCBIT's chosen database. Rigorous evaluation demonstrated the performance advantages of running Oracle on Egenera versus traditional systems.

Management: Egenera's elegant provisioning and management software distinguished it from other platforms evaluated. A single console provides access to all virtual servers in the system, lowering administration requirements and costs. SCBIT officials describe server management with Egenera as "simple, clear and easy."