IBM recently announced updates to its Power Systems line of servers. As with most server product announcements, the latest crop of Power Systems from IBM has better performance and more capacity than the previous generation, all at a lower cost.
If you’re an existing Power Systems customer, all these updates are good news. But for the rest of the IT community, why should you care?
The Cloud from IBM’s Perspective
IBM’s 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer put it into the public cloud business, but it never managed to join the rarefied air of the top three public cloud providers. Similarly, its Power Systems line has had years of success, but enterprises looking to equip their private clouds have been more likely to turn to Dell or HPE for their servers.
Now that IBM cloud exec Arvind Krishna has taken the reins at Big Blue, IBM is doubling down its cloud strategy. The company is focusing in particular on the mission-critical needs of its largest enterprise clients, who have always been a sweet spot for IBM.
IBM brings a number of cloud-centric assets to the table for such customers in addition to IBM Cloud (the renamed SoftLayer) and the Power Systems line.
For one, it has the technology and innovation focus of Red Hat, whose acquisition was another feather in Krishna’s cap – but there’s far more to IBM’s cloud strategy than the addition of Red Hat.
IBM also brings established technologies to the cloud table including AIX and IBM i, joining the ubiquitous Linux. AIX, IBM’s venerable version of UNIX, is still popular in IBM shops of all sizes. IBM i – the midrange operating system popular on the AS/400 servers of the last century – retains a sizable installed base that relies on it for mission-critical workloads to this day.
The Power Systems story brings both AIX and IBM i forward – to on-premises, cloud, and hybrid multi-cloud environments. Customers who depend on these operating systems can thus remain confident in their IBM investment, in spite of the age of their favored software.
The Power Systems strategy goes well beyond IBM’s support for older operating systems, however. The fundamental message here is that IBM’s reputation for supporting mission-critical workloads extends to all flavors of cloud.
The Many Permutations of Cloud
The list above – on-premises, cloud, and hybrid multicloud – only cover part of the myriad cloud choices available to enterprises today.
Add to the mix: private cloud, which an organization might deploy either in an on-premises data center, or they might perhaps collocate it with a third party.
Hybrid multicloud, in turn, actually combines two related but different configurations. Hybrid cloud refers to a combination of public and private cloud, while multicloud typically (but not universally) refers to two or more public clouds.
And then there’s hybrid IT, which adds an explicit on-premises option to the various hybrid multicloud configurations.
IBM offers Power Systems options for all of these various cloud deployment alternatives. In addition to the familiar on-premises configurations, IBM offers the Power Virtual Server, giving customers the benefits of the Power platform in a hybrid cloud environment. Also new: a certified install of SAP HANA on the Power Virtual Server.
For customers who desire a hybrid configuration, IBM will be adding the Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management to the mix, providing an abstracted management infrastructure that works across all of the various hybrid cloud scenarios for the Power Systems technology.
Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management integrates with Red Hat Ansible, a leading open-source provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool. Ansible facilitates automation of hybrid multicloud deployment and configuration of AIX, IBM i, Linux, z/OS, and Windows environments across Power, Z and x86 servers with consistent tools, processes, and skills.
Cloud Pricing by Any Name
One of the primary benefits of the cloud – in particular, the public cloud – is the advantage of pay-as-you-go pricing and the commensurate shift from CAPEX to OPEX. Purchasing physical servers, in contrast, has generally been CAPEX.
IBM is addressing this problem by taking a page out of its own mainframe playbook. Ironically, the cloud’s pay-as-you-go, pay for what you use pricing dates back several decades to IBM’s original mainframe pricing model.
IBM has long realized that customers would be reluctant to foot the bill for an entire mainframe system outright, so it rolled out usage-based pricing. Over the years, the company has updated its mainframe pricing model several times – and today, all public clouds use a similar OPEX-centric approach to pricing.
IBM is now bringing this variable pricing model to Power Systems. The Power Systems private cloud solutions feature no base monthly fees, where customers pay for only what they use via metering by the minute.
Not only does this pricing model enable customers to manage associated business risk, it also gives IBM the lowest price point in the industry for a deployed physical server, since pricing essentially starts at zero.
The Intellyx Take: Bringing Mission-Critical to the Cloud
Given the multitude of options that IBM is presenting its Power Systems customers, what is the big picture takeaway here?
The answer: IBM is shifting the mission criticality story for the cloud.
Traditionally, enterprises have been well-advised to keep mission-critical workloads on premises, while the cloud is better suited for dynamic use cases that can tolerate some level of uneven performance.
What IBM is doing with its Power Systems – as well as the IBM Cloud itself – is giving its customers a variety of cloud options that support whatever level of mission criticality they desire, including the ability to integrate mission critical workloads into hybrid cloud environments. These options give customers flexibility without sacrificing the security and performance benefits of on-premises systems.
IBM’s subtext here is refreshingly shrewd. Back in the day, customers would say ‘you never get fired for choosing IBM.’ Over the last several years, IBM has strayed from this core principle.
But under Arvind Krishna’s leadership, Big Blue is returning to its roots as the vendor every enterprise can rely upon, both for mission-critical workloads as well as everything else, either on-premises, in the cloud, or both.
Copyright © Intellyx LLC. IBM is an Intellyx customer. Intellyx retains final editorial control of this article. Image credit: IBM.
