Written by Anthony J. Ciccone, Director, Product Management, IBM Power as a Service Offerings, IBM Power and Ming Christenson, Director, Product Management, SAP and PowerVS Offerings, IBM Cloud

As the demand to modernize grows, organizations are under increasing pressure to innovate while sustaining operational excellence.  In fact, over 70% of industry leaders agree that hybrid cloud is key to making that transformation possible¹.  That’s why IBM has been investing heavily in IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) - an enterprise-grade hybrid cloud platform purpose-built for mission-critical workloads.  Now, for the first time, IBM Power11 is available across the full server portfolio and in PowerVS.  With Power11 now integrated into PowerVS, businesses gain even more performance and agility.  New and existing PowerVS clients are excited and anticipating the new capability.  

“IBM Power Virtual Server has been the best cloud migration we have experienced in years, and we are excited to see Power11 launched in this cloud offering simultaneously and look forward to taking advantage of the latest generation in the very near future.” – Matthew Thurman, Infrastructure Architect, Jim’s Formal Wear

Businesses are leveraging IBM Power Virtual Server to accelerate their hybrid cloud journey and drive consistent, impactful results.  Proximity enhanced business resiliency by adding PowerVS as a disaster recovery site, achieving 50% faster recovery at 80% lower cost.  FNZ accelerated application modernization by adding PowerVS, enabling 15x faster testing, faster release cycles, and improved quality.  A leading US retailer leveraged PowerVS to open a new store in just 30 minutes instead of two weeks.  IBM itself saw a 30% reduction in infrastructure and operational costs by running RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server.

"At Meridian IT, we fully embrace PowerVS and have clients leveraging the solution with great success. PowerVS provides our clients with access to the latest IBM Power technology along with advanced capabilities. It’s the right fit for all kinds of needs - whether they’re running mission-critical workloads, looking for better ways to protect their data, or putting strong disaster recovery and high availability plans in place.” - Tom Horan, VP, mPower Center of Excellence, Meridian IT Inc.

And the simultaneous launch of Power11 in PowerVS is just the beginning - IBM continues to expand the hybrid cloud capabilities of PowerVS to help businesses modernize with speed, agility, resilience, and confidence.  Other notable and recent enhancements include:

• General Availability of RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server,  a new hyperscaler option designed to move SAP S/4HANA workloads from IBM Power servers on-premises to cloud within 90 days and improve SAP S/4HANA Cloud migration time by up to 15-25% compared to moving from Power to x86 environments.  According to SAP, IBM's own RISE with SAP modernization journey across 175 countries using SAP Cloud ERP Private on IBM Power Virtual Server is one of the world’s largest corporate transformation projects.
• PowerVS and watsonx integration toolkits to securely and seamlessly connect your PowerVS-based applications and data to co-located watsonx SaaS and other IBM Cloud services - without the complexity of building or managing your own AI environment.  Accelerate AI adoption by leveraging watsonx to unlock new insights faster.
• Shared Processor Pools optimization to improve efficiency and reduce licensing costs for AIX and IBM i workloads with dynamic CPU allocation and pre-allocated core capacity.

“At Mainline, IBM Power Virtual Server enables us to deliver the agility and scalability our clients demand while preserving the performance and reliability of IBM Power systems. PowerVS helps our clients modernize workloads, integrate with cloud-native services, and achieve cost efficiencies - all without compromising mission-critical applications. It’s a game-changer for businesses seeking to transform and innovate at their own pace.” Michael Miller, Enterprise Architect, Mainline Information Systems

• Disaster Recovery Automation to simplify and enhance business continuity by enabling automated fail-over orchestration between geographically dispersed IBM Cloud regions leveraging IBM’s global storage replication (GRS).  
• New release of IBM i Migrate While Active further simplifying the migration of IBM i workloads to PowerVS.  IBM i Migrate While Active for IBM i 7.4 has been enhanced to support a new method of migrating your IBM i to Power Virtual Server called Partition Mirror.  This new capability allows you to migrate a running application without having to stop production and quiesce the system.
• Expanded IBM i Software Tiers to support the full range of IBM i software tiers - P05, P10, P20, and P30 - on both Power10 and Power11 systems.  Thanks to Virtual Serial Number (VSN) capabilities, customers can select and be billed based on their specific core and memory needs, and flexibly scale between tiers, independent of physical hardware. 

“Power 11 supercharges a customer’s hybrid cloud journey with the simplicity of PowerVS.  Today’s hybrid enterprise requires comprehensive cyber resilience, and the Cobalt Iron/IBM partnership delivers this with secure automated backup powered by IBM Storage Protect.  Today’s enterprises can feel confident that workloads in any location on IBM Power11 will be consistently secure and resilient.” - Richard R. Spurlock, CEO and Founder, Cobalt Iron

• Security with SCC-WP integration to deliver end-to-end protection, combining workload security posture management with cloud-native application defense.
• New Cyber Vault capability providing automated clean room services further protecting workloads running in PowerVS from cyber-attacks through a combination of capability offered by IBM and Celerity.  

“At Celerity, we’re proud to support IBM’s continued innovation in IBM Power Virtual Server - bringing enhanced flexibility, performance, and security to clients pursuing hybrid cloud strategies. As a trusted provider of IBM Power Cyber Vault and PowerVS, we’re enabling resilience beyond infrastructure. Our CopyAssure service, now integrated with IBM Power Cyber Vault on Power11, delivers automated recovery assurance aligned to the NIST framework, ensuring every backup is clean, validated, and ready for fast recovery.” – Michael Gowan, Chief Revenue Officer, Celerity

Introducing IBM Power Virtual Server Hybrid Cloud Package

Launching late July, the IBM Power Virtual Server Hybrid Cloud Package combines select Power11 hardware with IBM PowerVS cloud capacity. This integrated solution enables clients an easy on-ramp to common hybrid use cases, such as cloud-based backup, disaster recovery, application development, testing, modernization, and data center optimization.

"Power11 delivers the performance, reliability, and flexibility needed for mission-critical applications, and PowerVS is the cloud of choice. At Fresche, we collaborate with our partners to leverage both solutions to help clients maximize the value of their IBM i environments." – Lief Morin, General Manager, Managed Services, Fresche Solutions.

Conclusion

With the general availability of IBM Power11 in IBM Power Virtual Server and across all server classes - clients can unlock new levels of performance, flexibility, and resilience for their mission-critical workloads.  Whether you're modernizing IBM i applications, expanding AIX environments, on a path to RISE with SAP, or building cloud-native solutions, PowerVS provides the hybrid cloud foundation to scale with confidence.  IBM continues to remove barriers to modernization while preserving the differentiated value IBM Power deliver to customers, it's time to re-imagine what's possible with Power in the cloud.

Ready to accelerate your hybrid cloud journey with IBM Power Virtual Server and Power11?  Contact IBM today to get started.

¹ IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud