System i: Why Power Systems?

System i: Why Power Systems?: Why Power Systems? Powerful forces—mobile, cloud and big data & analytics—are redefining how business gets done. Leaders are lev...

Why Power Systems?

Why Power Systems?

Powerful forces—mobile, cloud and big data & analytics—are redefining how business gets done. Leaders are leveraging these forces to deepen relationships with customers and partners, drive new efficiencies and expand business models. IBM is the right partner to help you:

Leverage systems that optimize big data and analytics performance.

Power Systems are designed for big data—from operational to computational to business and cognitive Watson solutions—are optimized for performance and can scale to support demanding and growing workloads. Capitalize on the currency of data by finding business insights faster and more efficiently. And gain the elasticity you need to handle the varying analytics initiatives your business requires.

Realize the true potential of enterprise cloud.

Power Systems will help you deliver on the promise of cloud and take advantage of superior cloud economics. With higher utilization and performance capabilities and the ability to scale out and up, you can reap the benefits of improved economics associated with fewer scale-out systems. Leveraging the robust security built into the foundation of Power Systems, you gain the confidence you need to move more workloads to the cloud, capitalize on greater efficiencies and do more.

Revolutionize the way IT is created and consumed.

POWER architecture is at the heart of the OpenPOWER Foundation, a community that’s taking advantage of an open technology platform to help organizations create new opportunities and design next-generation applications to drive business success. The first to adopt open server technology, Power Systems help you more quickly and easily deliver a broader set of services and incorporate new technologies using the same technology footprint

IBM i Software Roadmap & Support Cycle

For many years, IBM had a practice of delivering a major IBM i software release approximately
every two years. Feedback from IBM i clients, however, was that upgrading to new software
releases required extensive testing, and in some cases certification to adhere to local compliance
regulations. In response, IBM has extended the period between major releases, providing regular
IBM i Technology Refreshes (TR) that enable new capabilities without requiring a release
upgrade. IBM has also increased the support life cycle for major releases. IBM i 7.1 was made
available in April 2010.

IBM’s software support and life cycle strategy reflects the fact that most companies using IBM i

run their most critical business applications on the platform. This strategy includes the practice

of supporting an IBM i release until the next two releases have been made available, plus at least

twenty four months – which translates to approximately six years of support. Automated

operating system upgrades are available to easily move up to the next two releases providing for

an ongoing supported IBM i environment. For example, customers running IBM i 5.4 or 6.1 can

easily upgrade to IBM i 7.1.