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Follow UsCIOL: What is so exciting about IBM's Power 7 systems?
Viswanath Ramswamy: With Power 6 and Power 7 we broke the myth that Unix is only for data centres, that they are the best database servers and that it is too expensive to pervade down to the rest of workloads. With Power 7, IBM started to come out of data centres too.
Also Read: IBM migration pgm for HP Oracle-Sun clients
Power 7 can be a cost-effective substitute for applications that are very discreet in nature and which need to be outside data centres.
Moreover, it can also help in consolidating and virtualising application, which are outside data centres and take them inside data centres.
Also, Power 7 can be cost effective from software licensing front as well.
Today customers are not using the whole potential of a processor, which has got 40 cores. However, they are paying for all the cores, whereas, they can get things done with a system that has lesser number of cores.
Why should a customer buy a bunch of 10 or 15 HP x86, or Intel or Dell servers, when they can get the same performance with one Power server?
Today, IBM is not only pervading into workloads that are inside data centres, but is also getting out and pervading into smaller applications as well. This is going to be the next big play going forward.
CIOL: Which are the major segments where you see more adoption for Power 7 systems?
Viswanath: The adoption is high where the response time for the output of applications is very high — such as banking, telecom, insurance, SMB segments etc. Newer adoptions are seen in high-performance computing, analytics, and SMB areas, where Intel would have been the first choice.
Today more and more people are adopting Power on Unix server or AIX on Linux servers for the simple fact that they can run 10 servers in one box. Gone are the days when you required specific Unix administrators. Today they are available in plenty.
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Viswanath: From the business point of view, it is huge opportunity for IBM. Having said that, we also do not want our partners, who probably have HP boxes, to lose their customers.
The news is just a month old; however, we see a lot of fear among customers. There are a lot of programmes being undertaken by IBM, where we are going around to HP customers and telling them that IBM can help them to migrate, give them hardware on lease or even buy-back Itanium boxes if they want us to.
Leasing is very important because the news is an unplanned one from a customer's point of view and this is the right point of time for HP customers to look at Power AIX.
CIOL: So have customers started responding to your programmes?
Viswanath: Yes, a couple of them (though I cannot name them now) are reaching out to us. It is a quick opportunity from a recall point of view and a long-term opportunity from a business point of view.
CIOL: However, Intel has said that it is still committed to Itanium for at least another two generations of its product-line?
Viswanath: I cannot comment on Intel's future roadmap. For someone to buy it, they should have an ecosystem to support it.
It is like a car, where one wheel is the processor, the second is OS, third is database, and the fourth is application. A car cannot run with just one robust wheel!
With IBM, we have the processor Power 7, operating system AIX, applications including Oracle application, and database, including DB2 or Oracle DB.
Moreover, IBM Power 7 benchmark stands far ahead of Itanium's. There is a lot of catch to do for any competitor to get there.
CIOL: With one competitor down, how do you look at Oracle-Sun's competition?
Viswanath: Oracle-IBM's has been a long-standing relationship and will continue to be so. However, in the market, especially on the hardware front and probably on the DB front, we might compete. It is up to the customers to choose what they want.
Even after Oracle's acquisition of Sun, nothing has changed from neither IBM or Oracle's side.