Right Architecture for Uncertain Times

Are these uncertain times? Maybe. People are unsure where, when, how, or if they should report to work. Who will they report to; where, how, and when. If I was a typical employee these might appear uncertain times  FYI, DancingDinosaur has never been an employee so everything about work was always uncertain from Day One.

People I meet with are rapidly automating their operations with software to improve productivity by managing manual infrastructure tasks. They want to leverage any increased productivity to enable even higher-value projects. All the new IBM Power10 processor-based servers, for instance, have consistent automation and management to optimize workload deployments across hybrid clouds that are built on Red Hat OpenShift, managed with IBM Cloud Pak technology and automated with Red Hat Ansible. 

Organizations can also separately purchase enterprise hybrid cloud application monitoring and observability with Instan on Power to anticipate issues and leverage resource optimization with Turbonomic (IBM AI enabled) on Power.

We have also added advancements that expand and simplify our pay-as-you-go offerings, providing clients more flexible consumption choices for their infrastructure. We offer built-in cost optimization so you can take advantage of cloud economics on-prem. In addition, the Power S1022, Power S1024 and Power E1050 all have Power Private Cloud capabilities, allowing server resources to be shared in pools during spikes in demand and increase flexibility.

Metered capacity with monthly invoicing is part of Power Private Cloud for pay-per-use consumption so the payment experience mirrors how you pay for public cloud. You maintain control of your critical applications and data wherever they reside. That’s the IBM way, right?

The recently introduced Power10 processor-based systems are optimized to run mission-critical workloads (like core business applications and databases) and maximize the efficiency of containerized and cloud-native applications. An ecosystem with Red Hat OpenShift also enables incremental innovation, Meanwhile cloud-native development is available with applications on AIX, IBM i and Linux to run any of the organization’s other activities. 

For this, each Power10 processor core has four Matrix Math Accelerators designed to improve performance of AI models and lower latency by running inferencing on the same server to access and analyze data faster  

Cybersecurity invariably comes up early.  One hallmark of the new Power10 processor-based systems is platform integrity from the processor to the cloud. The new Power S1014, Power S1022, Power S1024 and Power E1050 platforms support transparent memory encryption, enhanced isolation and Trusted Boot to help prevent emerging side-channel attacks from hackers. 

They also were designed to enhance security across hybrid cloud environments without impacting performance of business-critical applications. To that end it included security standards that are intended to support cryptography advancements — such as quantum-safe cryptography and fully homomorphic encryption — to help protect today’s data from both the expected and unexpected  bad actors.

According to IBM the market reception of Power10 has been good. The company feels these are the right servers for these uncertain times with a broad family of options.

Alan Radding is DancingDinosaur, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghostwriter. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter