IBM has known for some time that virtualization puts a damper on raw server sales, so the focus going forward is likely to shift to "doing more with less."

Witness the company's latest Systems Director management stack, which the company bills as an "intelligent dashboard" capable of managing energy consumption, overall performance and utilization of both physical and virtual resources. The goal is both to improve performance and reduce costs at a time when energy consumption and system administration are costing the data center more than actual hardware.

Systems Director 6.1 integrates with the Tivoli management solution to provide an end-to-end management infrastructure that can cut operating costs upward of 30 percent, according to IBM.

The package is optimized for the System z, Power Systems, BladeCetner and System x server platforms, as well as the System Storage platform, although the company says it is compatible with select third-party hardware and storage systems as well.