Merrill Lynch is installing IBM's iDataPlex 'cloud' servers to help reduce energy costs and power consumption at its data centre.
Merrill - which is being acquired by Bank of America - will use the iDataPlex servers to help build and evaluate new risk analysis programs, says IBM.
The new server model is part of IBM's $100 million "Blue Cloud" initiative and is designed to achieve "stateless computing that effectively turns many separate computers into a pool of shared resources".
IBM says this paves the way for mass-scale, Internet-style computing in a compact, energy-saving package. IDataPlex more than doubles the amount of systems that can run in a single IBM rack - packing five times the compute power of typical systems, claims the vendor.
"Our goal is to rapidly adopt technologies like iDataPlex that reduce the power consumption within our data centres," says Jeffrey Birnbaum, chief technology architect, Merrill Lynch. "IDataPlex is a perfectly positioned platform for this new style of computing - giving us the ability to pack a lot more compute power into smaller, less expensive package and minimise power and cooling costs."