We’re happy to share that the quickest, easiest way to spin up (and out) off-premises IBM POWER servers is officially here.

IBM Power Systems Virtual Server — now available — delivers IBM POWER9 virtual machines, with IBM AIX and IBM i, in an off-premises virtual infrastructure. It’s the best of IBM POWER in one, convenient, economical, self-managed, pay-as-you-use environment. This news is also a welcomed complementary offering to our existing portfolio of POWER-based off-premises solutions, including PowerAI, SAP HANA and Skytap Solutions.

The hybrid intent

Nearly 80% of the Fortune 100 have IBM Power Systems running their most mission-critical workloads. For years, those AIX and IBM i clients that wanted to expand their Power IT resources and reach by deploying both on-premises and off-premises didn’t have a direct route to do so. The hybrid intent was there; however, a cost-effective off-prem opex option was not. Expanding our POWER footprint to deploy the raw performance of POWER9 in an off-prem virtual infrastructure recognizes our enterprise clients’ needs to build a hybrid cloud decision framework.

In action: Iptor Supply Chain Systems

One of the most valuable, long-term benefits of IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers is direct access to the “disruptive edge.” Applications can leverage virtual server APIs for the latest technology in AI, blockchain, containers and other cloud-native microservices. And enterprise clients can deliver new and old applications using an extensible platform. The payback delivers peak load scalability, resilience, and security.

In 2018, Iptor Supply Chain Systems (Iptor) — a leader in supply chain management — teamed up with IBM to extend their services and cloud offerings. Since then, we got to work designing and building a custom IBM Power Virtual Server solution for their Copenhagen facilities. While chatting with Christopher Catterfeld, Chief Product & Marketing Officer for Iptor, he noted they just stood up an IBM Watson AI chatbot for the first time, continuing on to say, “Without having that reach into the cloud, it’s much more difficult to use the cloud services we want. We like being connected to those additional drops of value that IBM Watson and IBM Blockchain have to offer.”

Iptor stood up 300 of their top enterprise clients into our Power Virtual Server solution, while maintaining the on-premises workloads they required. Their plan is to take full advantage of today’s solution once it reaches EU.

“For us, the added benefit of having an IBM Power Systems offering on the IBM Cloud is really all about the efficiency of what we can do with and for our customers. Along with our Power Cloud integration platform aperīo, it’s now a powerful and scalable answer to spinning up and adding on customer workloads when required—by the meter. That’s huge.”

Practical, not radical  

The release of IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers gives our AIX and IBM i community extremely practical and logical solutions for virtual infrastructure partitions. For example, clients can start with non-production tasks in development, test, customer support and backup environments.

• Development: Projects can begin without waiting for capital budget approvals, server deployment and other obstacles. Multiple development environments can be deployed when needed and scaled as required.
• Test: IT can build automated, full-scale environments that spin on-command to accommodate the transient nature of the environment. Test times get reduced, multiple tests can run in parallel, etc.
• Customer support: Dev teams can troubleshoot, replicate and resolve issues faster by using a virtually unlimited supply of LPARs for staging.
• Disaster recovery: Systems of records, DB2 transactions or ERP/CRM plans can remain resilient and highly available when off-site backup is needed.

The blue on blue benefit

IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers extend the same quality, virtual server resources to our AIX and IBM i communities that our communities have trusted for years:

• A premium, reliable network that’s 100% owned and operated by IBM.
• Modern and global data centers with first-rate technology, on-site staff and infrastructure.
• Physical and virtual server infrastructure provisioning in one place.
• Configuration variety in system, cores, storage, network, OS and management.
• Fast provisioning to get workloads up and running on-demand.
• Essential and cost-free 24/7 customer support in chat, on the phone and in our online development communities.

Getting started

IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers are currently available in Washington, D.C. and Dallas, TX, IBM data centers to AIX and IBM i clients in the Power Virtual Server Ordering Tool. To learn more about customization options, pricing, and on-boarding opportunities or to chat with one of our experts, visit us here.