IBM Power 10 Servers Lay the Groundwork for Innovation, Agility and Scale

We live and work in a world of rapid digital transformation, and organizations are increasingly asked to do more with capabilities they’re already using. Businesses are considering how they can move mission-critical applications that traditionally have run on servers — such as Oracle databases, core banking tools or industry applications — into more agile environments.

The IBM Power family of servers now brings the ability to leverage these mission-critical applications in more agile and efficient ways, bringing in new workloads or capabilities that deliver synergy with core business tools. For example, we’ve helped banking customers develop digital engagement hubs to extend core banking into other services such as online banking. Deploying containers or a container management solution on Power servers allows organizations to extend their environments and quickly leverage what they already have, enabling them to grow their core applications and respond quickly to competitive pressures in the marketplace.

Moving from older servers to the powerful, highly efficient IBM Power line of servers enables organizations to do more with less. Virtualization capabilities offered through PowerVM provide the computing power and flexibility to run multiple operating systems and workloads, including data-intensive solutions such as Oracle database software and SAP HANA.

PowerVM also enables IBM Power servers to use memory more efficiently, providing the flexibility and agility of a cloud-like environment while enhancing performance and driving down costs. Further, technologies such as our PowerVC, or virtualization controller, simplify the management of virtualized systems and improve overall efficiency as well.

As more organizations face compliance issues in their cloud environments while trying to operate them as efficiently as possible, we’re seeing many of them opt for hybrid and multicloud environments. These scenarios enable them to optimize their IT operations by keeping some workloads in private clouds on-premises while putting others in the public cloud. When IT teams can optimize workloads in this more efficient environment, their businesses realize much higher returns on investment.

With its Power 10 line of servers, IBM has introduced a platform that provides the efficiency and scalability of cloud environments while operating on-premises. IT teams can consolidate multiple workloads onto these systems and run them at very high utilizations to improve efficiency.  Power servers provide the capabilities organizations need for hybrid cloud success. We have focused on delivering consistent, leading performance and scale to support an organization’s mission-critical apps. No matter what workloads an organization may need to run — the biggest transaction systems in the world, the biggest database systems in the world — Power can handle them.

The world is buzzing with the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). We understand that AI will soon be everywhere. The IBM Power 10 line includes accelerators for machine learning workloads built right into the processor. This enables IT teams to execute AI modules and models right in line with transactions, which often makes them faster than having to move workloads off to a GPU or a data lake somewhere.

This may not be the answer for every AI training environment or large language model, but for many AI applications such as recommendation engines or supply chain management tools, running AI modules close to an application and the data offers performance advantages. As more organizations look to leverage AI and perform inferencing recommendation engine activities right on chip, Power 10 offers some real advantages.

Story by Steve Sibley