IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems - April 2018 - 25

place versus starting over from
scratch," Virnig says.
As a Linux technology-based
data platform, HANA aligns
well with IBM's overall strategy
to enable the data tier and key
applications that connect to
it. "The reliability that Power
Systems offers, with the lowest
percentage annual server
downtime, the ability to run up
to eight SAP HANA production
instances per server, and savings
on operational costs from server
consolidation are examples of the
value the POWER platform brings
to SAP workloads," Bennett says.
More than 1,000 clients are
now running SAP HANA on
Power Systems, accelerating
business processes and gaining
more business insights on a
platform built for the flexibility,
resiliency and performance
required in the digital era,
Bennett says. "We have also
worked with our ecosystem
partners to allow our clients to
manage HANA on the POWER
platform with the same tools
and management software they
manage the rest of their SAP
landscape."
As new technologies or ISVs
enter the marketplace, IBM
evaluates if they would be a
good fit in the ecosystem and if
Linux on POWER is a good fit for
them, King says. IBM can quickly
implement and leverage solutions
that are based on Linux.
"We've built a solid
infrastructure leveraging the

ˆ
More than

1,000
clients are
now running
SAP HANA on
Power Systems

Power Systems platform and
our technical partners to extend
acceleration and networking
capability to the platform, with
support by all the major Linux
OSes that are enabled for cloud
deployment," she says. "By laying
a solid foundation, as data and
AI applications emerge, we can
easily add more building blocks to
the solution stack."

A Better Solution
As IBM tunes and optimizes
solutions that run on POWER, it
finds that some technologies run
faster on Power Systems than on
Intel* x86-based systems. "With
machine learning or deep learning
models, we determine where we
can help clients run their models
faster," King says. "For clients, that
can make all the difference in the
world when you're talking about
improving from days to hours or
hours to minutes."
With models becoming more
complex and requiring more

processing power for data
crunching, businesses need
better performing infrastructures.
That's where the POWER
platform earns it stripes. IBM's
OpenPOWER LC servers deliver
up to 2x the performance and
12x the workload density versus
Intel x86-based services (ibm.
co/2EA4yJJ).
"When you want to add a
new SAP application that runs
on HANA, the advantage of the
POWER platform is you don't
have to purchase a new server
to run it on," Bennett says.
"In the x86 world, there are
many more restrictions on what
you can run virtualized. On
POWER, you have much more
flexibility to run applications
on the same server with HANA.
This simplifies IT and gives the
business the ability to add more
workloads. It can also lower
operational costs by supporting
server consolidation, resulting
in smaller data center footprints

Investing in Open Source
In September 2013, IBM announced plans to invest $1 billion in new Linux*
and open-source technologies for IBM Power Systems* (ibm.co/1bz3foy).
That investment helped shape the Linux on POWER* ecosystem.
"A key focus of the overall investment was to double down on the value of
Linux based/open-source solutions to key clients around the world," says Terri
Virnig, vice president of Power Ecosystem and Strategy. "Since we announced
this, we have remained focused on open solutions that have value to our
clients to solve data-centric and artificial intelligence workload challenges, with
a choice of deployment options."
-B.M.

ibmsystemsmag.com APRIL 2018 // 25
http://ibm.co/1bz3foy http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems - April 2018
