ARMONK, N.Y., June 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that IBM POWER9-based IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers are now available in the IBM Cloud. Clients now have access to IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers in North America via the IBM Cloud catalog to provide powerful scaleup compute for AIX and IBM i workloads for hybrid cloud. This is all backed by the performance, resiliency, and security capabilities of IBM POWER9 and IBM Cloud. The launch of IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers builds on the broad portfolio of POWER-based solutions in the IBM Cloud including GPU-accelerated servers on IBM Cloud, SAP HANA on Power Systems on IBM Cloud, and IBM Cloud for Skytap Solutions.

To stay competitive, we see that enterprises are increasingly looking to adopt hybrid cloud strategies to help optimize everything from supply chains to sales. In fact, according to IDC, 90% of enterprises will embrace integrated hybrid cloud services, tools and strategies to support different applications and use cases by 2024ⁱ.

"With cloud adoption taking off among enterprises, today's news further underscores IBM's leadership as the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider," said Harish Grama, General Manager, IBM Cloud. "By delivering AIX and IBM i with IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers on IBM Cloud, we are providing businesses with the flexibility to deploy even their most mission critical, data-oriented workloads across any environment - whether in public or private clouds or on premises."

IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers Enable Choice and Flexibility for Hybrid Cloud

IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers deliver AIX and IBM i with fast, self-service provisioning, flexible management for off-premises workloads, and access to our enterprise stack of IBM Cloud services – all in a pay-as-you-go billing model which enables them to scale up on IBM's enterprise class systems to cater to their unique business needs. Companies now have increased options to explore hybrid cloud workload scenarios for disaster recovery, dev/test environments and partial IT infrastructure moves on IBM POWER9's 2xⁱⁱ performance per core compared to x86 Xeon Skylake systems. IBM Power Systems also provide security built in at all layers, from processor to the OS, designed to deliver end-to-end security capabilities.

For example, an IBM Power Systems client looking to run dev and test supply chain workloads on the public cloud can use the new IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers to provide the ideal scalable solution for this hybrid cloud scenario.

IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers in the IBM Cloud were designed so clients will be able to:

• Quickly and economically provision IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers on IBM Cloud within minutes, on-demand to facilitate scaling up and out.
• Deploy their workloads with interoperability between Power and x86-based systems in the IBM Cloud where they want with flexible, secured management.
• Choose their deployment by selecting their customizable system's cores, storage, network, OS, and more.
• Unlock cloud services at their fingertips with IBM's enterprise-stack of high value IBM Cloud services including analytics, AI, security, Blockchain and more.
• Leverage a heterogenous hybrid cloud infrastructure with both IBM POWER9-based and x86-based virtual machines.

IBM Launches New "Ready for IBM Power Systems on Cloud" Business Partner Program

In a separate initiative designed to build a skilled partner ecosystem community that can deliver cloud solutions on IBM Power Systems infrastructure, IBM today also announced the new "Ready for IBM Power Systems on Cloud" Business Partner Program. The new program will have a validation process for IBM Business Partners.  The validation will be largely based on their technical expertise on Power Systems and demonstrated success in helping enterprises with their business transformation and cloud strategy adoption.

As members of the IBM Power Systems on Cloud, IBM Business Partners will:

• Have their 'Ready for' solution highlighted in the Business Partner Application Showcase, searchable within IBM Partnerworld and externally from any browser.
• Let clients know that their solution meets IBM's client-centric specifications for technical integrations, support, and uptime.
• Use a new "Ready for IBM Power Systems on Cloud" badge to promote their solutions.

"We have been leveraging IBM Power Systems to deliver hybrid cloud solutions for over 10 years and to more than 1,000 clients. It's flexibility and performance has been extraordinary allowing us to differentiate our solution in the market," said Dave Wiseman, Vice President of Solutions Architecture, Connectria who joined a pilot for the program. "By joining the Ready for IBM Power Systems on Cloud Business Partner Program, we're able to further demonstrate our expertise with IBM as we help clients with their journey to cloud."

The IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers are available on the IBM Cloud in North America. For more information, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/

Contacts:
Sam Ponedal
IBM US
916-217-0145
sponeda@us.ibm.com

ⁱ Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2019 Predictions, (IDC #US44403818), October 2018.
ⁱⁱ 2X performance per core is based on IBM Internal measurements as of 2/28/18 on various system configuration and workload environments including (1) Enterprise Database (2.22X per core): 20c L922 (2x10-core/2.9 GHz/256 GB memory): 1,039,365 Ops/sec versus 2-socket Intel Xeon Skylake Gold 6148 (2x20-core/2.4 GHz/256 GB memory): 932,273 Ops/sec. (2) DB2 Warehouse (2.43X per core): 20c S922 (2x10-core/2.9 GHz/512 GB memory): 3242 QpH versus 2-socket Intel Xeon Skylake Platinum 8168 (2x24-core/2.7 GHz/512 GB memory): 3203 QpH.  (3) DayTrader 7 (3.19X per core): 24c S924 (2x12-core/3.4 GHz/512 GB memory): 32221.4 tps versus 2-socket Intel Xeon Skylake Platinum 8180 (2x28-core/2.5 GHz/512 GB memory): 23497.4 tps.

SOURCE IBM