IBM Unveils New Generation of IBM Power Servers for Frictionless, Scalable Hybrid Cloud

Bengaluru: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the new IBM Power E1080 server, the first in a new family of servers based on the new IBM Power10 processor, designed specifically for hybrid cloud environments.

New IBM Power E1080 server offers 2.5x greater per core performance vs x86-based servers[i]and sets a new world record SAP benchmark for 8-socket systems[ii].
Industry-first metering of Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for on-premises server planned to improve software licensing costs

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the new IBM Power E1080 server, the first in a new family of servers based on the new IBM Power10 processor, designed specifically for hybrid cloud environments. The IBM Power10-equipped E1080 server is engineered to be one of the most secured server platforms and is designed to help clients operate a secured, frictionless[iii] hybrid cloud experience across their entire IT infrastructure.

The IBM Power E1080 server is launching at a critical time for IT. As organizations around the world continue to adapt to unpredictable changes in consumer behaviors and needs, they need a platform that can deliver their applications and insights securely where and when they need them. The IBM Institute of Business Value’s 2021 CEO Study found that, of the 3,000 CEOs surveyed, 56% emphasized the need to enhance operational agility and flexibility when asked what they’ll most aggressively pursue over the next two to three years[iv].

Many see the answer to this need in a hybrid cloud computing model, which combines on-premises resources with cloud-based infrastructure and can offer up to 2.5x greater value than a public cloud-only approach[v]. However, not all hybrid cloud models are designed equally.

“When we were designing the E1080, we had to be cognizant of how the pandemic was changing not only consumer behavior but also our customer’s behavior and needs from their IT infrastructure,” said Dylan Boday, VP of Product Management for AI and Hybrid Cloud. “The E1080 is IBM’s first system designed from the silicon up for hybrid cloud environments, a system tailor-built to serve as the foundation for our vision of a dynamic and secure, frictionless hybrid cloud experience.”

“The more than expected duration of the pandemic has created heightened urgency in execution for businesses across industries. Organizations need to move with speed, agility, and the flexibility to react to changes in their customers’ needs in real-time while driving innovation and staying ahead of the competition. To achieve such agility, there will be an increasing mix of workloads on-premise and off-premise. While the latter is predominantly cloud-native, the former is getting transformed at a fast pace.”

“The newly launched IBM Power E1080 server is designed to be the backbone of a hybrid cloud platform that can provide maximum inter-operability and control to the clients. It will help for seamless deployment of workloads across the hybrid platform as well as faster development of new cloud-native applications, helping enterprises in India to scale their operation and deliver enhanced services to their customers. We see opportunity from BFSI, Telecom, Manufacturing, Retail, and Healthcare sectors for the IBM Power10 servers in India and our ecosystem partners will be an integral part of our go-to-market strategy. As part of our go-to-market strategy for Power10 server, we will also be reaching out to Independent Software Vendors who work with clients in a garage format to implement their solution through IBM servers,” says Ravi Jain, Director – Server Sales, IBM India/South Asia.

The new IBM E1080 was designed to introduce several key features including:

Enhancements for hybrid cloud like planned industry-first, by the minute metering of Red Hat software including Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 4.1x greater OpenShift containerized throughput per core vs x86-based servers[vi], and architectural consistency and cloud-like flexibility across the entire hybrid cloud environment to drive agility and improve costs without application refactoring.

New hardware-driven performance improvements that deliver up to 50% more performance and scalability than its predecessor the IBM Power E980[vii], while also reducing energy use and carbon footprint of the E980, allowing customers to do more with less. The E1080 also features four matrix math accelerators per core, enabling 5x faster inference performance as compared to the E980[viii].

New security tools designed for hybrid cloud environments including transparent memory encryption so there is no additional management setup, 4x the encryption engines per core, allowing for 2.5x faster AES encryption as compared to the IBM Power E980[ix], and security software for every level of the system stack.

A robust ecosystem of ISVs, Business Partners, and support to broaden the capabilities of the IBM Power E1080 and how customers can build their hybrid cloud environment, including a record-setting performance for SAP® applications in an 8-socket systemii. IBM is also launching a new tiered Power Expert Care service to help clients as they protect their systems against the latest cybersecurity threats while also providing hardware and software coherence and higher systems availability.

“IBM played a critical role as a technology partner during the merger of erstwhile Allahabad Bank with Indian Bank. With the amalgamation, IBM’s enterprise-class Power servers and storage helped us address critical business requirements like multi-fold increase in transaction volumes, back-end processing load, resiliency, high availability & scalability across the deployed solution. This has become the strong foundation for ensuring an overall enhanced experience for our customers. IBM has pro-actively taken steps to fine-tune the OS parameters for achieving optimum performance for the Core Banking Operations on the IBM Power Systems. All of this was well planned and executed even during the peak pandemic time,” says Deepak Sarda, CTO, Indian Bank.

Frictionlessiii Hybrid Cloud Experience Drives Modernization on IBM Power E1080

The IBM Power E1080 server helps deliver on the customer demand for a frictionless hybrid cloud experience, with architectural consistency across the entire hybrid cloud estate to simplify management and seamlessly scale applications to meet the dynamic needs of today’s world.

“We have been long-time IBM Power users and are looking forward to being one of the first organizations to test the new IBM Power10-based E1080 system with our mission-critical applications,” said Klaus at Finanz Informatik. “The new server addresses our demands to continue delivering our services at scale with high resiliency requirements, including new levels of security and improved energy-efficiency. We are also keen to see how the new features can accelerate our journey to hybrid cloud and the infusion of AI into our business applications.”

When leveraging an IBM Power10-based server, like the E1080, with the cloud-based IBM Power Virtual Server in a hybrid cloud format, the architectural consistency across resources means the often-bespoke mission-critical applications that tend to reside on-premises can be moved into the cloud as workloads and needs demand. This is designed to help clients avoid the prohibitive costs and time required associated with refactoring for a different architecture.

The IBM Power E1080 also has the capability to scale instantly with Power Private Cloud for Dynamic Capacity, allowing users to scale up and down with unused CPU capacity as needed and only pay extra for the additional resources they used. This can help improve operational efficiency and flexibility while avoiding server sprawl and lengthy procurement processes by bringing a cloud-like payment model to the data center.

Further enhancing the cloud-like economics for local hardware, the IBM Power E1080 is the first on-premises system planned to support metering by the minute for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, extending capabilities already available on IBM Power Virtual Server. Together, this is designed for even greater customer control of when, how, and where their applications are deployed.

“Red Hat has long been committed to delivering choice to our customers, a critical component in how these organizations approach open hybrid cloud deployments. Our collaboration with IBM on Power10 will serve as a continuation of this commitment to support a broad range of architectures,” said Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president, Platforms Business Group, Red Hat. “As an architectural foundation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift deployments on-premises metering, IBM Power will offer the scale and flexibility to help customers realize the benefits of open hybrid cloud.”

Through the close synergy with Red Hat, the IBM Power E1080 offers 4.1x greater OpenShift containerized throughput per core vs compared x86-based servers, allowing for more workloads to be deployed simultaneously within a single system.