Open Technology – Not Your Father’s IBM

There’s a tendency in the tech world to view IBM as a pusher closed technology ecosystems. We don’t blame you if this is what you think about IBM, but we’re here to say that in regards to today’s IBM, that perception is flat-out wrong.

Along Comes Linux

As we move full-speed into the era of cognitive computing, companies who formerly advocated closed systems are changing their tune.
In 2013 IBM began a five-year commitment of over $1 billion to fuel Linux and Open Source Innovation on Power Systems. Now, three years in, we’re seeing the ramifications of the increasing openness to open systems.

Innovate with Open Technologies

IBM is fully bought into open innovation. It’s one of their three core principals of their Cognitive Business vision:

  • Design for Cognitive Business
  • Build with Open Innovation
  • Deliver through Cloud Platform

The embrace open architectures and ecosystems is allowing for the delivery of new solutions faster to market. This is critical in the cognitive era where technology breakthroughs are happening at a rapid pace.

Building with open innovation means providing leadership and support for open innovation and stack optimization for supporting both contemporary environments and emerging open innovation. This also allows for the faster build of infrastructure that is optimized to run specific workloads based on unique business requirements.

Open IBM Success Story

HPS – Capacity on Demand

Consider Health Plan Services of Tampa, Florida, the largest independent provider of sales, benefits administration, retention, reform and technology solutions to the insurance and managed care industries in the United States.

HPS membership increased over 250% with the onset of the Affordable Care Act. They went from 1000 MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second) to 6000 MIPS. They went from five IFLs (Integrated Facilities for Linux) to 50.

This was an organization in dire need of accelerated transformation. Just consider the impact on these systems during open enrollment.
Capacity on Demand allowed for:

  • Production capacity of over fill billion transactions per week
  • Scaling up and down within minutes

Open Technologies Utilized

OpenPower Consortium

The Open Success Story with HPS is just a small example of how IBM is becoming a leader in Open Technology. Need more proof? Look no further than IBM’s open licensing model and their leadership in the OpenPower Consortium.

IBM is working with over 149 member organizations to build open ecosystems using POWER architecture.

IBM – Build with Collaborative Innovation

Open technologies are at the core of IBM’s Cognitive Business concept. As we continue to tell this story we’ll dive into how this concept requires more than just open technology, it requires that organizations have a choice for optimization.

Next time we’ll discuss the importance of optimized systems that are built for the dynamic needs of economics, data access, workloads, machine learning, compliance and performance.

Watch for future blogs on this topic to finding out more about how your business could adopt these concepts, or schedule a consultation to start building your own cognitive business story.

If you liked this blog, you also might like:  IT Empowers With Data-Centric Design

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IBM Power Servers

Why Power Systems To draw insights and make better decisions, businesses rely on the secure, flexible and open platform of IBM Power Systems. Built with the first processor designed for big data workloads, the design of Power Systems combines the computing power, memory bandwidth and I/O in ways that are easier to consume and manage, building on strong resiliency, availability and security.

  • Video: How IBM Power Systems Brings the Cognitive Era into Focus

  • Imagine a world with accelerated cognitive platforms that understand, reason and learn. IBM Power Systems is the only platform that can bring the cognitive era into focus with instant insights. Power Systems is also opening up the data center with open standards, open source, OpenStack and OpenPOWER. To learn more, visit: http://ibm.co/1SOnuA1

  • Infographic: Linux On Power

  • See how Linux on IBM Power Systems™ can help your company control costs, work efficiently and meet service-level agreements.

  • IBM Power Systems Enterprise Pools: Greater flexibility, availability and control for your business

  • IBM’s Enterprise Pools technology – exclusively on IBM Power Systems – enable you to move virtual processor and memory resources easily and conveniently, for virtually continuous server availability and simplified maintenance and system upgrades. See http://www.ibm.com/power/hardware/systempools/

  • POWER8 Scale-Out: Speedy and Scalable Cache

  • Follow Power Systems on YouTube to see how POWER8 puts the power in YOUR hands and read the blog on CAPI here: http://ibm.co/1AE8OtQ The result of breakthrough innovation, the POWER8 cache introduces a distinct divide-and-conquer design, which drives efficiency by allowing each core to carve out specific cache segments, while contributing to a more efficient, less costly infrastructure.

  • Infographic: Ready to Embrace Your Digital Transformation?

  • Ready to Embrace Your Digital Transformation?

  • Can a chip make the world safer?

  • Take a few seconds and see the waitless way Zato, using the enormous crunching power of POWER8, helped combat global terrorism, scanning terabytes of security data in milliseconds. Find out more at ibm.com/power/waitless

  • Infographic IBM Power Analytics On Power Systems

  • IBM® Power Systems™ let you capitalize on customer insight and expand your business

  • Growing data volumes and sources provide unlimited opportunities to increase customer engagement and revenue. Create new revenue sources with IBM Power Systems by analyzing multiple data sources in real time with open and secure cloud technology.Stay in Touch:Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/ibmpowersystemsFollow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ibmpowersystems

  • POWER8 Scale-Out: CAPI & Hardware Acceleration

  • Follow Power Systems on YouTube to see how POWER8 puts the power in YOUR hands and read the blog on CAPI here: http://ibm.co/1BRB6s6 POWER8 is expanding to new levels of partnership by opening up the CAPI architecture to innovation and customization. Tens of thousands of developers from around the world are now able to work on the platform and build solutions that we could never have imagined.

  • POWER8 Scale-Out: Amazing and Accessible

  • Follow Power Systems on YouTube to see how POWER8 puts the power in YOUR hands and read the blog on POWER8 Cache here: https://ibm.biz/BdEjFv POWER8 clearly stands as the best scale-out system for a business’s rapidly evolving needs. In addition to delivering at least two times the performance of the closest competitor, the overall acquisition costs are 58 percent lower. Inherent efficiencies, made possible by a wide range of sophisticated design breakthroughs allow for a 66 percent reduction in infrastructure overhead.