SoftLayer to Offer OpenPOWER Servers to Help Clients Better Manage Workloads in the Cloud

New POWER-based offering helps users leverage open community innovation, strengthening the IBM Cloud infrastructure

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Mar 04, 2015, 12:00 ET

ARMONK, N.Y., March 4, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that SoftLayer will offer OpenPOWER-based servers as part of its portfolio of cloud-based services.

With the new offering, clients will be able to select OpenPOWER-based "bare metal" servers when configuring their cloud-based IT infrastructure from SoftLayer, an IBM company. Leveraging the OpenPOWER Foundation design concept, the servers were developed to help clients better manage data-intensive workloads on public and private clouds.

Increasingly cloud technologies, both private and public, are enabling organizations to extend existing infrastructure, inexpensively and quickly. Servers built on the OpenPOWER architecture are designed to facilitate that transformation.

"The new OpenPOWER-based bare metal servers makes it easy for users to take advantage of one of the industry's most powerful and open server architectures," said Sonny Fulkerson, CIO at SoftLayer. "The offering allows SoftLayer to deliver a higher level of performance, predictability and dependability not always possible in virtualized cloud environments."

OpenPOWER-based servers leverage IBM's licensable POWER processor technology and feature innovations resulting from open collaboration among OpenPOWER Foundation members, which now total more than 100 technology leaders worldwide.

To develop the SoftLayer bare-metal server, IBM and SoftLayer worked closely with fellow OpenPOWER Foundation members TYAN, a provider of advanced server/workstation platforms, and Mellanox Technologies, a leading supplier of InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions.

Due in the second quarter, the SoftLayer bare metal servers run Linux applications and are based on the IBM POWER8 architecture, the processor technology at the heart of IBM's Power Systems line of servers.

The offering will also leverage the rapidly expanding community of developers contributing to the POWER ecosystem as well as independent software vendors that support Linux on Power application development who are migrating applications from x86 to POWER-based architecture.

Built on open technology standards that begin at the chip level, the new bare metal servers are built to assist a wide range of businesses interested in building custom hybrid, private and public cloud solutions based on open technology.

The new OpenPOWER bare metal servers will join SoftLayer's growing stable of POWER-based systems. The company first deployed Power Systems in 2014 to support the IBM Watson cloud portfolio. Initially, the new servers will be available in SoftLayer's Dallas cloud center, with planned expansion throughout the world.

Cost and configurations for SoftLayer's new OpenPOWER-based bare metal servers will be made available in conjunction with general availability.

For more information on IBM Cloud, go to www.ibm.com/cloud
For more information on OpenPOWER, go to www.openpowerfoundation.org

Media Contacts:

Kristin Bryson
IBM Media Relations
203-241-9190
[email protected]

Scott Cook
IBM Media Relations
312-669-4743
[email protected]

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SOURCE IBM