Lenovo introduces value line of dual processor servers 27 July, 2010 By Mark Cox

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

"We want to provide more end-to-end solutions for our customers," said Tom Ribble, director, ThinkServer Product Marketing, Lenovo. "We want to increase talk about Lenovo as a server vendor."

"This is a new play for us in this market, at price points we haven't seen before, and with more built-in features than the competition" Ribble said.

The MSP market is a major target of these models. Level Platforms has certified the new servers for monitoring and management by their Managed Workplace solution. Level Platforms has also developed new policy modules for each of the new servers, which are available to managed service providers as part of the policy module library. This certification ensures that MSPs can use the built in ThinkServer management tools and that the servers can be integrated seamlessly into Level Platforms' solution.

But the target market extends well beyond MSPs, Ribble said.

"These products are aimed to be versatile across a number of customer sets. They will be valuable for smaller businesses. We are also seeing traction and interest in the public sector, even larger companies with a lot of remote offices. Manageability plays with any of those."

The ThinkServer RD230 is a 1U rack server, starting at $USD999. It has built in SATA RAID 5 for advanced data protection, Web-enabled remote management tools to enable managed service providers to remotely monitor and manage their clients' IT systems, hot swappable hard drive storage, and a DVD writer for a convenient way to install new applications . ThinkServer RD240 is a 2U rack server, with more drives, up to 8, and up to 8 TB of storage, and starts at $USD 1399. The slightly larger RD240 rack caters to businesses that need to run high performance database, transaction and other line of business applications. The servers also offer the latest Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 series processors, helping them run 60 percent faster than legacy servers.

The ThinkServer TD230, which starts at $USD 829, is designed to give managed solution providers and businesses the flexibility and performance they need to outfit nearly any work environment. Customers can choose between direct connect or hot swap configurations to fit their needs, as well as among a variety of high performance and high capacity hard drives.

Because towers are usually located under a user's desk, the TD230 runs "whisper quiet" and even quieter than many desktops. Optimized for energy savings, it features a greater than 90 percent efficient power supply and is the only value two processor server to be designed with the EnergyStar for Servers 1.0 specification. The TD230 also offers the latest Intel technology to balance powerful performance and energy savings.

"Price is a leading message with these servers," Ribble said. "You get more bangs for your buck. But they also offer the Think Brand, as well as quietness and ease of use."