IBM Power: Multiple Cloud Options to Best Fit Your Business Needs

Trying to decide between IBM Power cloud deployments? IBM provides Private, Public, and Hybrid solutions, depending on your organization's needs.

Each of these has some benefits and drawbacks, depending on the type of solution that you want, and the type of infrastructure your business needs to support. Here's an overview of each of these IBM Power solutions, and the 5 Step Process used for deployment and modernization.

Private: Scalable, Secure Solutions

If you want to take advantage of IBM Power systems in the cloud, but also avoid moving off your own internal infrastructure, the private cloud solution is the right one for you.

The IBM private cloud runs off an organization's own internal infrastructure, making it possible for the company to retain complete control over their cloud system. The major benefits of this solution include:

• Security. Organizations are able to control the flow of their information by keeping their data within their own internal infrastructure.
• Kubernetes. Kubernetes and Docker are used together to provide better orchestration and a unified installation and deployment solution.
• Monitoring. Alerts and metrics can be used to find ways to improve the efficiency of the cloud solution as well as to build potential alerts.

The IBM private cloud also includes a transformation advisor, which can help an organization fine-tune and improve upon its environment. This scalable, robust platform is ideal for those who need superior privacy and security.

But the private solution doesn't always give the accessibility and the flexibility of a public or hybrid cloud solution. 

Public: Powerful and Accessible

The IBM public cloud solution leverages a shared cloud infrastructure, like Google, Amazon Web Services, or Microsoft Azure. In this case, the IBM public cloud solution will run on IBM's own cloud services.

Accessible and secure, the IBM public cloud makes it possible for organizations to run a comprehensive cloud-based solution backed by IBM's resources. A public cloud solution will have greater level of accessibility than a private cloud solution, and new technologies have made public clouds extremely powerful, secure, and robust.

A few of the advantages of the IBM public cloud include:

• Building with greater speed. The IBM public cloud allows for on-the-fly leveraging of cloud-based resources, compared to internal resource management.
• Protection and encryption. The IBM public cloud ensures greater levels of security through its advanced data encryption and security services.
• Open-source solutions. The IBM public cloud is supported by a vast open-source community, which has developed a number of incredible solutions.

On the IBM public cloud, organizations are able to build and deploy cloud-native apps, utilize high-power computing, and modernize the IBM public cloud’s VMWare workloads. For many organizations, the IBM public cloud is going to be an ideal solution. But it doesn't always provide the benefits a private infrastructure can. That's why hybrid solutions are becoming a popular option.

Hybrid: The Best of Both Worlds

What about organizations that want to maintain some internal control over their system, but still want to be able to leverage the power and the accessibility of the IBM cloud? 

A hybrid solution is considered today to be one of the most optimal deployments, because it offers the best of both worlds. Many businesses are increasingly using hybrid deployments, as they become easier to manage. 

Here are the major benefits of the IBM hybrid solution:

• Both private and public support in one. The IBM hybrid solution offers a broad range of computing solutions through the public cloud, while also offering Kubernetes-based containerization in the private cloud.
• Flexibility and ease-of-access. The IBM hybrid solution makes it possible to deploy applications to the environment that they are best suited to, rather than having to make compromises.
• Greater levels of integration. Through the IBM hybrid solution, both private and public applications can be integrated together both securely and seamlessly.

For most businesses, the hybrid cloud is going to be the best of the IBM power solutions. In the past, the only thing holding many businesses back from engaging with the hybrid cloud was complexity. But With IBM, a hybrid cloud can be acquired with minimal effort.

The 5-Step Process

How can an organization transition to IBM Power? Like many transformations, it takes some work. A managed partner can help. Here's the 5-step process to IBM modernization.  

• Step 1: Refresh hardware/OS. The organization's environment will be assessed and refreshed, to ensure an optimal infrastructure for taking advantage of IBM Power. This will be done to future-proof the solutions, as well, selecting the solutions that will be able to provide better efficiency for the organization moving forward. If a private cloud solution is being introduced, the organization may need to refresh its infrastructure to support it. 
• Step 2: Add IBM storage. IBM storage solutions will be used for greater flexibility and scalability, as well as to improve the privacy, encryption standards, and accessibility of the data. IBM's encryption standards are extremely advanced, making for greater levels of security and compliance on the public, private, and hybrid clouds.
• Step 3: Leverage cloud solutions. For public, hybrid, and private IBM power deployments, strategies and planning will be introduced to appropriately leverage the cloud solutions to the benefit of the organization's major needs and pain points.
• Step 4: Replatform with Kubernetes, Docker, etc. Containerization will be leveraged for improved deployment and management across multiple environments; this is especially necessary in private cloud and hybrid cloud solutions. Containerization still has to be managed, and Kubernetes and Docker will work together to provide ease of access and maintenance.
• Step 5: Rearchitect with microservices. Improved architecture will lead naturally to better efficiency and optimization, creating a network that is truly scalable and robust.

Of course, any transition can be difficult. Whether your organization is transitioning to a private, public, or hybrid solution, you may have questions. A managed services provider can help. An MSP can help with both transition and management.

For more information about IBM power hosting, and the managed services that can get you there, contact the experts at KS2.