IBM to Launch OpenPower Consortium

August 2013

Big Blue, IBM, is looking to make a big move in the cloud data center market as cloud computing, big data, analytics and mobility continue to fuel rapid changes in the data center enviroments

IBM announced it will be licensing its Power processors and architectures to other companies, enabling them to build their own servers, networking systems and storage appliances based on the Power architecture.

As part of the new licensing strategy, Big Blue will also be launching the OpenPower Consortium to help create a hardware and software ecosystem around the Power architecture. The OpenPower group, which reportedly will focus on the upcoming Power 8 technology, initially will include IBM, Google, Nvidia, Tyan and Mellanox.

The moves are being made to boost Big Blue’s faltering Power business, which recently reported a decline in quarterly revenues of 24 percent for the second quarter. The company is also targeting Intel with the announcements by giving enterprises an alternative to Intel when it comes to cloud data centers.

While IBM will find itself competing in an increasingly crowded market, analysts note that the company does offer a strong architecture for analytics and the cloud, which could give organizations a solid option other than Intel and AMD’s x86 offerings.