IBM has announced IBM LinuxONE 4 Express, extending the latest performance, security and AI capabilities of LinuxONE to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and within new data center environments. The pre-configured rack mount system is designed to offer cost savings and to remove client guesswork when spinning up workloads quickly and getting started with the platform to address new and traditional use cases such as digital assets, medical imaging with AI, and workload consolidation.
Building an integrated hybrid cloud strategy for today and years to come
As businesses move their products and services online quickly, oftentimes, they are left with a hybrid cloud environment created by default, with siloed stacks that are not conducive to alignment across businesses or the introduction of AI. In a recent IBM IBV survey, 84% of executives asked acknowledged their enterprise struggles in eliminating silo-to-silo handoffs. And 78% of responding executives said that an inadequate operating model impedes successful adoption of their multicloud platform. With the pressure to accelerate and scale the impact of data and AI across the enterprise – and improve business outcomes – another approach that organizations can take is to more carefully identify which workloads should be on-premises vs in the cloud.
“Startups and SMEs are at the heart of enabling employment-rich economic growth for South Africa. Nevertheless, they are not immune to macro challenges throttling the economy. As a result, they are turning to digitization to be agile, efficient and innovative in order to thrive. The IBM LinuxONE 4 Express presents a unique opportunity for them to craft a deliberate hybrid cloud strategy tailored to their needs,” said Ria Pinto, General Manager and Technology Leader, IBM South Africa. “With the latest LinuxONE 4 system, IBM brings the transformative potential of hybrid cloud and AI directly to the fingertips of entrepreneurs and SME owners. The system seamlessly integrates advanced technologies into their business operations, empowering them to navigate the digital landscape with confidence.”
Delivering high scalability, availability and security for a range of data center environments and use cases
IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4, launched in April 2023 and based on the IBM Telum processor, features capabilities designed to reduce both energy consumption and data center floor space while delivering the scale, performance and security that clients need. Also built on the Telum processor and delivered in a rack mount format, IBM LinuxONE 4 Express offers high availability for clients who have strict resiliency requirements due to internal or external regulations. In fact, IBM LinuxONE 4 Express systems, with GDPS, IBM DS8000 series storage with HyperSwap and running a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform environment, are designed to deliver 99.999999% (eight 9s) availability.
The system addresses a whole new set of use cases that startups and small businesses are facing, including:
- Digital assets: IBM LinuxONE 4 Express provides a secured platform with confidential computing capabilities specifically designed to protect sensitive data, like digital assets. IBM Secure Execution for Linux is a hardware-based security technology that is now built into IBM LinuxONE 4 Express. Scalable isolation for individual workloads can help protect not only from external attacks, but also insider threats. This includes data in use, a particularly critical stage of security for digital assets use cases.
- Medical imaging with AI: With IBM Telum processor on-chip AI inferencing, clients can co-locate AI with mission-critical data on a LinuxONE system, allowing data analysis where the data is located. For example, health insurance companies could analyze large volumes of medical records in near real time to validate process claims, increasing the speed of business decision making.
- Workload consolidation: IBM LinuxONE 4 Express is designed to help clients simplify their IT environments and cut costs by consolidating databases onto a LinuxONE system. Designed to bring significant cost savings for clients over time, clients that move Linux workloads from compared x86 server to an IBM LinuxONE 4 Express can save over 52% on their total cost of ownership over 5 years.
Activating the IBM Ecosystem for client success
With the IBM LinuxONE Ecosystem, including AquaSecurity, Clari5, Exponential AI, Opollo Technologies, Pennant and Spiking, IBM is working to provide solutions for today’s sustainability and cybersecurity challenges. For clients that run data serving, core banking and digital assets workloads, an optimized sustainability and security posture is key to protecting both sensitive private data and sustainable organizational goals. IBM Business Partners can learn more about the skills required to install, deploy, service and resell IBM LinuxONE 4 Express here.
