New server platform with plenty of power under the hood – and future-proof security

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The shutdown of companies and nations during the pandemic has opened many people’s eyes to how vulnerable a modern organization can be. Not only when fundamental assumptions change, but also when habits change in the wake of a crisis. There is little doubt, for example, that working from home and a widespread use of online commerce will become part of everyday life in the future. 

Two factors in particular stand out as companies and organizations learn from the process:

• It is no longer sustainable to assume that all employees must work from one location. On the contrary, it is crucial to be able to scale and adapt your operating model when a crisis hits.
• Safety is the alpha and omega. The more you rely on the combination of remote working and public cloud-based solutions, the more exposed your business is to cyber attacks.

In September we will launch our new High-end Power server, the first model in the new Power10 platform, which – as the name suggests – is based on the brand new Power10 processor. Of course, both were in the pipeline long before the world shut down in early spring 2020. Nevertheless, the platform addresses a number of the challenges that companies have had to deal with.

First of all, security is built in as a central and indispensable part of the platform. For example, it is possible to run virtualized applications in containers via Red Hat OpenShift with the same high level of encrypted security as if you were storing applications or services on separate dedicated partitions. It helps secure your company’s critical data and systems against both widely distributed and targeted cyber attacks – whether your employees are working from home or in a more secure environment behind the company firewall.

The Power10 chip has built-in hardware encryption, with additional security against decryption via the quantum computers that are expected to become more widely available in the coming years. This not only secures sensitive data in the here and now, but significantly minimizes the risk that unauthorized parties can extract information now and potentially decode it years in the future.

Another core element is extensive scalability. Power10 is the first widely available processor based on 7 nanometer technology. This gives it substantial performance advantage over its predecessor, the Power 9, but with close to 1/3 lower carbon footprint, due to lower power and cooling requirements. Moreover, the processor is several times more powerful than the strongest available x86 processor. This makes it an ideal base for a company’s container initiative or as the center of an ambitious SAP strategy.

Basically, it allows your business to build a private or hybrid cloud that can scale to unprecedented levels – and with extremely high levels of security. Basically, you get the scalability benefits of a public cloud, with the unique freedom – and significantly increased security – of being in control of the data center. This makes the platform suitable as a key component of a hybrid cloud strategy.

At the same time, we make it possible to minimize the initial investment and gradually increase the cost level in line with the company’s needs, following a flexible pay-per-use model.

This is not only interesting from a financial point of view. The model also makes it possible to fully invest in a platform that can form the heart of truly comprehensive digital transformation strategies – but only pay for the extra performance when the need arises. For example, in the context of an investment in AI or ML, for which our new Power server is a perfect fit.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg, however, and I can only recommend delving deeper into the many possibilities, and join our announcement event by clicking here.