After investing time and money into your IBM Power Systems for years, it’s frustrating to realise that most major cloud platforms aren’t compatible with IBM i Series or AIX. It doesn’t just feel like IBM is being left behind — it feels like you are. It’s even more puzzling when you learn that thousands of companies still use IBM Power around the world, with 60% of them based in the United States.

As cloud hosting becomes more commonplace, so too does the desire to find ways to connect and transmit your data without gutting your current infrastructure. But if your company relies on Power Systems, you probably feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. Cloud providers like AWS and Azure don’t support the infrastructure you need to run mission-critical databases and applications.

So how do you proceed? On the one hand, sticking with the status quo and continuing to maintain on-premises IBM Power i or IBM AIX systems is difficult and costly when the rest of your IT has moved to the cloud. On the other hand, starting from scratch on a new platform is a remarkably expensive and time-consuming endeavour.

There’s another way — one that doesn’t involve a lose-lose situation for the business owner who wants to keep things as they are: deploying IBM Power Systems in a dedicated cloud environment. This cloud hosting solution relieves the burden of managing and maintaining your own servers, enabling you to move your IBM systems seamlessly to the cloud.

But how does it work? And why is this possible with CloudFirst when other big names in the industry, like Microsoft Azure and AWS, don’t support IBM Power in their public clouds?

What is an IBM Power Systems cloud environment?

The IBM Power Systems cloud environment is an IBM-friendly cloud hosting solution designed to transform how you host and use your data. It enables companies that operate with Power to access all the benefits of the cloud they wouldn’t otherwise be able to — things like enhanced privacy, scalability, availability and IT cost savings.

This cloud hosting solution works thanks to IBM Cloud Direct Connect. This private, completely secure connection offers low-latency, high-speed pathways to directly integrate IBM Power with other cloud hosts. The process is so fast and seamless that it essentially operates as one network; there are no tolls or speed bumps along the way preventing you from getting the best possible network experience.

When you migrate your IBM i or IBM AIX servers and workloads to the cloud, you no longer have to maintain the hardware, software or networking between them and the rest of your IT on other cloud platforms.

By choosing a cloud provider that specialises in IBM Power Systems, you gain the advantage of dedicated specialists, 24/7 security and support, and expert guidance in securing your IBM Power System when migrating to the cloud. You also get a solution that pleases the CFO just as much as it does the head of IT.

Why won’t other cloud providers support IBM Power?

It’s a common scenario: an organisation starts a cloud initiative, moves its IT to a public cloud, and then discovers that the hyperscalers don’t support IBM Power. But what justification do the big cloud companies have for ignoring the needs of those who want to continue using their tried-and-true IBM systems?

The answer is that companies like Amazon and Microsoft consider IBM Power too niche a market for them to pursue. They’ve all but given up on anyone who wants to keep their IBM infrastructures. In fact, many IT graduates aren’t even learning how to handle these systems, so not enough industry professionals have the specialised skill set required to administer Power servers in a data centre.

Since the demand is smaller, the big companies see no point in allocating resources to make their operations compatible with Power. They think it’s easier to strong-arm companies into upending how their IT works or finding alternative solutions.

But it’s not that simple — especially for companies that have been using IBM systems for decades and prefer to continue using them while taking advantage of everything the cloud offers. Andrew Hudson writes for Ars Technica that ‘two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, eight of the top 10 insurers, seven of the top 10 global retailers and eight of the top 10 telecommunications companies’ still use mainframes, many of which come from IBM.

Why move IBM Power to the cloud at all?

Companies need to modernise their IT, adapting older technology to work with newer systems. For instance, databases on IBM i operate well with modern-day Linux and Windows environments, but there’s still very little support for managing IBM i hosting in the cloud. This is a frustrating situation considering how many businesses continue to use IBM technology and that it would cost them a fortune to reconfigure.

Many companies have already moved most of their infrastructure to the cloud, with IBM Power being the last bastion of their IT team’s old guard. Since they can’t find a way to operate Power Systems in the cloud, companies often compromise on how they access and store their information. And while there are important network considerations when migrating IBM Power Systems to the cloud, there are also countless ways businesses can benefit from an IBM Power hybrid cloud.

Guaranteed availability

One of the cloud’s most enticing benefits is how easy it is to access everything you need. Cloud management systems are fantastic for streamlining this access — and now, with integrated support for IBM Power, it’s become significantly easier to manage every element of your IT in one place with guaranteed availability.

Scalability

Scalability means having the means and flexibility to grow while keeping the growing pains to a minimum. A Power hybrid cloud environment makes scalability simple; there’s no more worrying about hitting the limits of data storage, compute or other resources.

You can now seamlessly integrate IBM Power with other cloud hosting services and scale your storage usage as your business grows, without feeling constrained by limitations.

Cost savings

There’s a long list of ways that cloud computing saves companies money, including:

  • Reduced hardware costs
  • Reduced maintenance costs, especially for scarce talent
  • Lower electricity costs and carbon footprint
  • Shifting IT spending from CAPEX to OPEX

Security

Another reason companies move to the cloud is for improved cybersecurity. Forbes highlights how valuable something like an IBM Cloud environment is for a company’s cybersecurity needs. They go further than suggesting that companies only need to worry about attacks from bad actors as part of their cybersecurity plan; they also note the cost of physical security that IBM Power Systems in the cloud eliminates.

And even if you can afford the astronomical expense involved in maintaining physical security, a cloud environment still protects your business from natural disasters such as flooding, fires and earthquakes.

The baseline of IBM Power Systems cloud environments

You don’t have to leave your Power Systems behind; with CloudFirst solutions for IBM Power, there’s finally a way to modernise every aspect of your IT without starting from scratch. From there, we can combine our IBM cloud environment into a hybrid setup by integrating it with the rest of your IT stack, no matter where it’s hosted.

Want to learn more about how to integrate IBM Power Systems with AWS or Azure in the cloud? Download our free white paper now to harness the full power of multi-cloud IT.