Online has opted for the IBM S822L servers as part of its bare metal environment. According to Sébastien Cassier, Team Leader, Online: “With IBM’s POWER8-based servers, we can increase our levels of service to clients seeking a dedicated cloud platform alternative to x86 servers.”
Online are not the only French company to choose IBM POWER8-based servers for building out their data centre. Last year, French hosting giant OVH announced it was to deploy IBM POWER8-based servers in its global data centres.
Linux the key to Power Systems adoption
The press release makes it clear that the decision to choose IBM Power Systems was to provide customers with an alternative to x86 Linux and as a platform for big data. Cassier said: “We wanted to approach the business differently than in the past. The dedicated bare metal Power Systems running Linux differentiate us from other service providers because we can now say that our clients have the opportunity to run the most powerful servers in the world in a native environment for their business needs.”
Online will make the servers available as bare-metal with Power KVM on top and as part of their Dedibox range. This gives customers the ability to install whatever they want on the servers. The press release makes mention of the OpenPOWER Foundation and the technologies that it has brought to the IBM Power Systems market. What it doesn’t do is specify any technologies that Online intends to make available to its customers.
One of the reasons for targeting IBM POWER8 is cost, according to the press release. It gives the example of customers running Open Source database MariaDB on a Power S822L and a comparable x86 server. The claim is that on POWER8, customer can run 1.87 times more transactions with MariaDB at 40% lower cost than if they were to deploy on x86.
Doug Balog, General Manager, IBM Power Systems said: “Today’s cloud service providers require systems that will increase the performance for their existing clients as well as attract new clients with alternatives to x86. Power Systems can give MSPs like Online a more cost effective and powerful solution than an x86 environment for customers analyzing and managing massive amounts of data in the cloud.”
Conclusion
This is another win for IBM in the MSP space and one that it needs. While the IBM Power Systems team have been making inroads at the enterprise level, they know that it is the public cloud and hosting market that will help drive their message home.
It will be interesting to see how quickly Online begins to attract customers to the POWER8 bare-metal servers and what they are using it for. Only then will be get a clearer picture as to where customers see the sweet spot for the technology.
