IBM Taps Global Network of Innovation Centers to Fuel Linux on Power Systems for Big Data and Cloud Computing

CHICAGO, Aug. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- At the LinuxCon North America conference today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it is tapping into its global network of over 50 IBM Innovation Centers and IBM Client Centers to help IBM Business Partners, IT professionals, academics, and entrepreneurs develop and deliver new Big Data and cloud computing software applications for clients using Linux on IBM Power Systems servers. 

Last year IBM committed $1 billion in new Linux and open source technologies for its Power Systems servers including the opening of five new Power Systems Linux Centers in Beijing, China, New York, New York, Austin, Texas, Montpelier, France and Tokyo, Japan.  Today over 1500 ISV applications are available for Linux on Power, fueled in part by work performed at these centers.

IBM is adding Power Systems Linux services to its Innovation and Client Centers to accelerate this momentum and meet growing global demand for new kinds of software applications that take advantage of IBM's superior POWER8 architecture. The expansion – a more than 10x increase in global reach – provides in-person and online access to Linux on Power Systems application development resources to potentially thousands of additional IBM Business Partners, developers, and clients worldwide in key arenas including Brazil, Russia, India, Vietnam, Australia, United Kingdom and Germany. Resources vary by location and can include:

• In-person and online Linux training workshops that show developers how to easily migrate and optimize their applications using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Canonical Ubuntu Server Linux technologies on Power Systems.
• Hands-on assistance from dedicated Linux and IBM systems specialists to show developers how to take advantage of IBM's unique POWER8 parallel processing and advanced virtualization capabilities.
• Access to IBM's business consulting specialists and Business Partner resources to develop joint go to market strategies for Power System and Linux based solutions.

"The open server ecosystem IBM is developing around POWER8 and Linux allows Zend to help our clients develop and deliver mobile and cloud applications more rapidly," said Andi Gutmans, CEO and co-founder, Zend. "IBM Power Systems and Linux, combined with Zend Server software and the PHP language, will provide a new level of cloud economics for clients by allowing them to automate application delivery to their end users."

"With a higher number of threads per core, a significant clock speed increase and a phenomenal offload capability via CAPI, IBM POWER8 is a fantastic processor for Cognitive and Big Data applications," said Amir Husain, Founder & CEO, SparkCognition Incorporated. "We are using POWER8-based systems to analyze large Cloud Security and Industrial Internet data sets, build automated Cognitive computing models, find threats and automatically research potential vulnerabilities via Natural Language Processing and other Machine Learning techniques."

"Businesses are looking for the latest open server innovations to help them capitalize on Big Data and cloud computing. They want new technologies that can achieve this faster and more cost-effectively than the racks upon racks of commodity servers heating up their data centers today," said Doug Balog, General Manager of IBM Power Systems. "IBM's Power System technologies and Linux can meet these needs and provide innovators with an advanced architecture to create new kinds of software applications to help clients gain a competitive advantage."

Open Server Innovation

IBM Power Systems offer the first open server platform for enterprise computing.¹ POWER's open architecture and Linux are at the core of the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community formed in 2013 that now includes 53 members worldwide collaborating to leverage the POWER processor's open architecture for broad industry innovation. The members of the OpenPOWER Foundation are collaborating to help meet the evolving needs of business by:

• Opening the POWER architecture to give the industry the ability to innovate across the full Hardware and Software stack.
• Driving an expansion of enterprise class Hardware and Software stack for the data center.
• Building a complete ecosystem to provide customers with the flexibility to build servers best suited to the POWER architecture.

For more information about Linux on IBM Power Systems visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/software/linux/

For more information about IBM Power Systems Linux Centers and locations visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/software/linux/centers/.

For more information on IBM Innovation Centers visit https://ibm.biz/IIClocations.

For more information on the OpenPOWER Foundation visit http://www.openpowerfoundation.org.

¹ By "first open server platform", this means that the IBM POWER server is the first server that has made its systems, processor, and chip design and architecture fully available to an open development alliance for comprehensive licensing and collaborative design allowing third parties to co-innovate.

Contacts:

Kristin Bryson
1-203-241-9190
[email protected]

Ciri Haugh
972-345-4626
[email protected]

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SOURCE IBM