IBM announced that it is teaming with AMD and Novell to create an integrated Linux offering built around IBM's next generation Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) data server, code-named "Cheetah." IBM also revealed that Cheetah has now entered an open beta testing for customers and business partners.

The new Linux offering will combine IDS Cheetah, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell and IBM xSeries 3105 highly-scalable servers powered by second-generation AMD Opteron 1000 Series processors to provide new availability and security features in a low cost solution to help SMBs meet their critical needs.

Designed to offer new capabilities to help customers meet their changing data management goals by enabling users to extract more value from their business information, IDS Cheetah is scheduled for release in 2007.

"The IDS data server provides an environment with low administration needs, which in turn lowers the total cost of ownership and frees up DBAs to focus more attention on their overall Information on Demand strategy," said Arvind Krishna, vice president IBM data servers.

Cheetah features significant enhancements to application development that are aimed at helping customers accelerate time-to-value for new applications and in porting existing applications to IDS.

"The combination of IDS Cheetah and the xSeries 3105 powered by AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture will provide customers with a cost-effective, high-availability solution to meet their critical data management requirements," commented Terri Hall, vice president, Commercial Solutions and Alliances, AMD.