As discussed in our June 18 blog post, support for Linux on Power Systems servers was a major part IBM’s recent Power8 announcement. It seems that industry leaders are agreeing with IBM’s focus on open source environments and seeing significant opportunity for Linux on Power Systems. With the combination of the flexibility and innovation offered by Linux and the reliability, scalability, security, and performance offered by IBM’s Power8, more organizations are realizing the value of Linux running on Power8.
The cover story for the July 2014 issue of IBM Systems Magazine is a roundtable discussion with five industry experts from Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE regarding the growth potential for Power Systems in the open source market. The experts responded to questions such as: What workloads are Power Systems clients deploying on Linux? What changes are being seen in the demand for big data and analytics capabilities? What changes are being seen in the enterprise and the SMB space regarding Linux? Are new industries are moving to Linux? And, what other Linux Power trends are they seeing?
A few of the interesting points made by these experts during this roundtable discussion include the following:
- Power Systems users are looking for more cloud capabilities and IBM has made great strides with Power8 in cloud environments.
- Big data and analytics have become core business solutions for many organizations and they need the ability to quickly deploy and scale in the cloud.
- Linux on Power8 is a ideal for large enterprises who must meet nonstop IT demands while also keeping investments low.
- Linux on Power8 is also an excellent option for SMBs who need to keep costs lower while also having strong interoperability with other systems.
We recommend to take the time to read the complete article if you are running Linux on Power8 or just considering it.