Building Your Hybrid Cloud with IBM Power11

The launch of IBM’s Power11 marks a pivotal moment for IT leaders managing established IBM Power Systems environments. For organisations that rely on the resilience and performance of this platform for their mission-critical applications, the arrival of a new hardware generation prompts a familiar yet crucial set of questions. Do you commit to an on-premises hardware refresh? Is now the time to accelerate a move to the cloud? Or is there a third way – a hybrid approach that combines the security of on-premises infrastructure with the flexibility of the cloud?

For many, the answer lies in a carefully constructed hybrid cloud strategy, built upon the formidable foundation of Power11 and its cloud counterpart, IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS). This approach is not about choosing one environment over the other; it is about creating a single, cohesive infrastructure that allows you to place workloads precisely where they deliver the most value, whether in your data centre or in the cloud.

Why Hybrid Cloud on IBM Power?

The decision to adopt a hybrid cloud model is driven by a range of strategic business and technical considerations. For CIOs, the optimal path forward must balance multiple, often competing, priorities. The IBM Power11 platform, when combined with PowerVS, is uniquely engineered to address these concerns directly:

• Cost Considerations:
  There is a constant need to balance the long-term costs of public cloud with the capital expenditure required to operate on-premises data centres. A hybrid model allows you to shift from CapEx to a more flexible OpEx model for specific workloads, optimising spend across your entire estate.
• Data Sovereignty:
  For many UK organisations, particularly in regulated industries, the requirement to maintain data within national borders is non-negotiable. PowerVS Private Cloud offers a solution by bringing a cloud operating model to your own data centre, satisfying regulatory demands for data residency.
• Security and Privacy: While cloud security has matured significantly, the enhanced data protection offered by on-premises physical infrastructure remains a priority for the most sensitive workloads. Power11 continues IBM’s legacy of security, from the processor chip up, and extends this into the cloud with features like Quantum-Safe encryption.
• Compliance:Adhering to standards like GDPR requires direct control over data. A hybrid model provides the tools to manage data location and processing, simplifying regulatory adherence across environments.
• Performance:
  Latency-sensitive applications demand high-performance processing close to the data source. Power11 delivers significant performance gains over previous generations, and its availability in PowerVS ensures that cloud-based workloads do not compromise on speed.
• IT Operations Strategy:
  Modernising infrastructure is only part of the journey. A true hybrid model reinvents IT operations, creating a consistent management plane across on-premises and cloud resources, thereby reducing complexity and the need for disparate skill sets.

The Power11 platform is not merely another server; it is the cornerstone of a unified platform experience designed for intentional workload placement across a distributed hybrid infrastructure.

Key Use Cases for a Power11 Hybrid Cloud

The theoretical benefits of hybrid cloud become tangible when applied to real-world business challenges. For organisations running on IBM Power Systems, the combination of Power11 and PowerVS provides powerful solutions to several common pain points.

1. Data Centre Optimisation and Strategic Modernisation

Many organisations face pressure to consolidate or exit data centres to reduce operational overheads. The capital expenditure associated with hardware refreshes and the ongoing costs of maintenance, power, and cooling are significant financial burdens.

The Challenge:
You may be running applications on ageing Power8 or Power9 hardware. A traditional on-premises upgrade requires a substantial upfront investment and a lengthy procurement, installation, and configuration cycle. Furthermore, you are paying for capacity that may only be fully utilised during peak periods, leading to inefficient resource allocation.

The Power11 Hybrid Solution:
A hybrid strategy allows you to address this challenge strategically. Instead of a full-scale, on-premises upgrade, you can migrate specific workloads directly to Power11 instances within PowerVS. This approach offers several advantages:

• Immediate Access to the Latest Technology: You can begin using Power11 on day one of its launch without waiting for on-premises hardware delivery. Virtual servers can be deployed in the cloud in under 10 minutes.
• Shift to an Operational Expenditure (OpEx) Model: PowerVS employs a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing you to pay only for the resources you consume and eliminating the need for a large initial capital outlay.
• Dynamic Scalability: Resources can be scaled up or down in real-time to meet fluctuating demand, preventing over-provisioning and ensuring you are not paying for idle capacity.
• Reduced Operational Burden: IBM manages the hardware maintenance and upgrades within the PowerVS environment, freeing your IT team to focus on business outcomes rather than infrastructure management.

For customers on older Power8 systems, the performance uplift is substantial, with up to 81% better core performance on Power11. This efficiency gain means you can run the same workloads on smaller, more cost-effective cloud instances.

2. Robust, Cost-Effective Business Resiliency and Disaster Recovery

Maintaining a secondary data centre for disaster recovery (DR) is one of the most expensive and complex aspects of IT operations. For many businesses, the high cost leads to DR strategies that are either ineffective or inadequately tested, posing a significant risk to business continuity.

The Challenge:
Your primary production environment runs on-premises, but the cost of equipping and managing a separate, fully replicated DR site is prohibitive. Your current tape-based or partial recovery solutions cannot meet the stringent Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) required for your critical applications.

The Power11 Hybrid Solution:
PowerVS is an ideal platform for building a modern, cost-effective DR solution. By using the cloud as your recovery site, you can eliminate the need for a physical secondary data centre entirely. Key benefits include:

• Automated Disaster Recovery: PowerVS offers built-in DR solutions with multi-region options and automated failover capabilities, significantly minimising downtime in a real incident. Site-to-site storage replication and automated DR are available for AIX, Linux, and IBM i customers.
• Flexible Recovery Models: You can create a “warm” DR location in the cloud at a fraction of the cost of an on-premises equivalent, or even a “cold” back-up for less critical workloads to further optimise costs.
• Continuous Validation: The platform supports “clean room” automation, which allows you to continuously validate backups and snapshots to spot threats or corruption early. This proactive testing reduces recovery time during an actual cyber incident.

Case Study in Action: Covenco and Proximity

This model has been proven to deliver exceptional results for UK businesses. Proximity, a leading data solutions provider, found its existing disaster recovery provider could not keep pace with its growth. The rising costs and limited scalability of their previous solution created unacceptable risks as they expanded to serve larger clients.

Proximity partnered with Covenco to design and implement a flexible, cloud-based DR solution built on IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS). The business outcomes were transformative:

• An 80% reduction in costs for a reliable disaster recovery capability.
• A 50% improvement in recovery times, moving from days to hours.
• Greatly enhanced system resilience, providing peace of mind and supporting future growth³⁶.

The Proximity case study is a powerful testament to how a PowerVS-based DR strategy, delivered by an experienced partner like Covenco, can simultaneously reduce costs and improve resilience.

3. De-Risking Upgrades and Accelerating Application Modernisation

Migrating long-standing, business-critical applications based on AIX or IBM i to new hardware and operating system levels is a high-stakes undertaking. The inability to test thoroughly in a production-equivalent environment can delay projects and introduce significant risk.

The Challenge:
You need to modernise your applications or upgrade to a new version of AIX or IBM i to take advantage of Power11’s capabilities. However, you lack the spare on-premises capacity to create a dedicated, like-for-like test and development environment. Purchasing hardware purely for a temporary validation project is not financially viable.

The Power11 Hybrid Solution:
This is one of the most compelling use cases for a hybrid cloud. PowerVS provides the perfect “sandbox” environment to accelerate modernisation with minimal risk.

•  Jumpstart Application Validation:
  You can instantly provision Power11 virtual servers in PowerVS to create a testbed for your applications. Because the cloud environment runs the same hardware and operating systems as your on-premises estate, you can validate performance and compatibility with complete confidence.
• Develop and Test on Power11:
  Your development teams can get hands-on experience with Power11, enabling them to begin modernising applications to leverage new features immediately. Once validation is complete, you are ready for a seamless transition to your new on-premises Power11 production environment.
• Integrate with Modern Cloud Services:
  PowerVS is not an isolated island. It integrates seamlessly with over 250 IBM Cloud services, including WatsonX for AI, Red Hat OpenShift for containerisation, and advanced analytics tools. This allows you to incrementally modernise your monolithic applications, for example, by extending an enterprise workflow with a Generative AI assistant using a secure connection to WatsonX.

Covenco’s approach to Hybrid Cloud on IBM Power transforms migration from a high-risk “big bang” event into a controlled, phased process, ensuring your applications are production-ready on Power11 from day one.

Underpinning the Future: Enhanced Security and AI at the Core

Beyond the immediate operational benefits, the Power11 platform introduces foundational enhancements that future-proof your infrastructure.

Quantum-Safe Security:
The threat of “capture now, decrypt later” attacks, where encrypted data is harvested today with the intent of decrypting it with future quantum computers, is a growing concern for long-term data protection. Power11 addresses this head-on by embedding Quantum-Safe technology into the platform.

• The PowerVS infrastructure leverages Quantum-Safe firmware signing to protect firmware integrity, consistent with NSA recommendations.
• Traffic from Live Partition Mobility (LPM) is protected with Quantum-Safe encryption, safeguarding in-flight data during maintenance operations.
• With PowerSC, you can perform one-click cryptographic inventory discovery to identify and prioritise risks, accelerating your migration to a quantum-safe posture.
• Read our associated article about Quantum Safe Encryption features in IBM Power11

AI Inferencing Growth:
Power11 continues to build on the on-chip AI capabilities of its predecessor, delivering up to 80% growth in on-chip AI inferencing with stack innovations compared to Power10.

The processor’s on-chip Matrix Math Accelerator (MMA) units enable AI operations to run directly on the server without requiring expensive, specialised GPUs, making AI more cost-effective and accessible.

Consistent Technical Foundations:

For IT leaders and their teams, a key advantage of the Power11 hybrid cloud is the consistency of the experience. There is no need to re-platform or retrain staff on entirely new architectures.

• Operating System Support:
  PowerVS on Power11 supports the enterprise operating systems you rely on. This includes AIX 7.2 and AIX 7.3, as well as IBM i 7.4, 7.5, and the latest IBM i 7.6. This ensures that your existing applications and skills remain relevant.
• Familiar Management:
  The user experience for provisioning a Power11 virtual server in the cloud is designed to be seamless. For administrators, it is as simple as selecting the new Power11 machine type (such as the S1122 or E1180) from a dropdown list within the existing IBM Cloud interface. This consistency dramatically lowers the adoption barrier for cloud services.
•  Compliance and Certification:
  IBM PowerVS holds an extensive list of compliance certifications, including SOC 1 & 2, PCI-DSS, and assessments for GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO standards, ensuring the platform is ready for enterprise and regulated workloads.

Charting Your Course with Covenco and IBM

The transition to a hybrid cloud environment, while powerful, requires careful planning and expert execution. Choosing the right partner is just as critical as choosing the right technology.

As an IBM Gold Business Partner with proven expertise in designing and deploying IBM Power solutions in the Cloud, Covenco is uniquely positioned to guide your organisation through this journey. Our experience, exemplified by the successful DR transformation delivered for Proximity, demonstrates our ability to translate the capabilities of IBM Power Virtual Server into tangible business value – reducing costs, mitigating risk, and enhancing operational resilience.

We can help you:

• Assess your current IBM Power environment and identify the workloads best suited for a hybrid cloud model.
• Design a tailored strategy that encompasses data centre optimisation, disaster recovery, and application modernisation.
• Execute a seamless migration, leveraging tools and automation to minimise downtime and risk.
• Provide ongoing support and management, ensuring your hybrid environment continues to deliver value long after the initial deployment.

The launch of IBM Power11 is more than a hardware refresh; it is an opportunity to redefine your IT strategy. It provides a clear path to building a flexible, secure, and cost-effective hybrid cloud that aligns with your business objectives. By combining the performance and security of on-premises Power11 with the agility of Power Virtual Server, you can create an infrastructure that is truly fit for the future.

To begin the conversation about your hybrid cloud strategy and explore how a Power11-based solution can benefit your organisation, get in touch with the IBM Power and PowerVS team at Covenco today.