IBM Power Systems Reviews

I am a system administrator, and I work with AS/400. I take care of the upgrades. I am also making the CL programs (CLP) and working on RPG skills for myself. 

We have multiple environments. We have Power9, Power8, and Power7. V7R4 is the latest one out there, but V7R3 is the latest one that we have. Companies don't deploy the latest version unless they are sure, and they have got feedback from others about the version. We also have disaster recovery and backup machines.

The flashcopy feature is helping us so much. It reduces time . For example, if we want to have a backup on a machine, we can flashcopy it to another environment, and this first machine is free to use.

Power System is like a dream solution for every IT person because it has redundancy, and it doesn't stop. It doesn't get affected easily.

I don't see any weaknesses in this solution. At the moment, we have Power8. It is stable and runs smoothly. We have a big load, and it is working very well.

The redundancy in Power machines is very important and it gives stability and feasability on all levels. Power systems can integrade different types of storage, which gives the advantage to combine all your storage capacity especially if you go for virrualization.

In Power6, latency was an issue, but nowadays, we are on Power8, which doesn't have any such problems.

Sometimes, we can have issues when we are moving or migrating to a newer version, which is the case with almost every company. Some new issues or problems show up suddenly, and you do not have the time to research and find the solution. That's when we contact IBM technical support. 

It is incredibly stable.

We use IBM technical support not so much per year because everything is clear and has procedure, and most of the time all migrations or upgrades will be prepared and tested before moving to production environment. Sometimes, we face complications while moving to a newer version, where we share such cases with IBMi team. It is very seldom when we do not have the time to research and find the solution. That's when we contact IBM technical support.

We are also in contact with the application supplier, who can provide any request from our side with the fix needed. The deployment will be at our level, first on the testing environment and after the result will meet our team expectations, we deploy it on the production environment.

I didn't use any solution previously.

We are a team of three people. We are responsible for the deployment of the database as well as switching from one machine to another.

We are responsible for OS upgrade. When we are moving from one version to another, sometimes I make plans for that. I also take charge of some other parts because we share everything in the team.

I would say if you are not using the IBMi solution, you are missing something. You should at least know about this solution. I was an IT support previously, and When I started to use IBM Power Systems, I fell in love with this machine due the professionalism, solidity and high scalability . 

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is how not to have a single instance of failure. These machines don't die and don't have any problems. For me, it was astonishing to be able to switch disks or the power supply without turning off the machine. It is a reliable and great solution.

I would rate IBM Power Systems a nine out of ten.

We've used IBM Power Systems in our passport and immigration department. It's a government-run department. 

We've also used it with a few SMEs. They required smaller versions offsite with our systems. We did sell an IBM system to a couple of universities where they had about 20,000 students. It's used in a variety of instances and environments.

I'm working for an IT company and our work is to sell the products, I'm not really a direct user of it. I can't really say much about the features as I'm not an end-user.

The product does offer co-marketing services to their partners.

The solution is the best product on the market.

The technical support that clients get from IBM is excellent.

Overall, IBM actually does restrict us, the sellers, at a limited percentage of margin when you're selling the product. We cannot go above 8%. That's something as a business that can be difficult, as we do suffer because at times. We don't have the option of quoting more and making more money out of it. We can't due to the IBM compliance.

In terms of features, as a salesperson and not an end-user, I haven't really explored the product and can't say exactly what might be lacking.

IBM does have a market presence here in Pakistan, however, the kind of penetration that Huawei has is a lot more. They have a larger enterprise team that sells products here and they have a direct relationship with the customers. IBM relies a lot more on the partners rather than going to the customers directly. Due to their approach, Huawei has captured about 70-80% of the server and storage industry and market in Pakistan.

I do understand that IBM does offer co-marketing funds for us to actually promote IBM and its products. We have actually utilized them in the past as well, maybe three, four years ago. However, IBM does have a very, very, strict kind of compliance. When it comes to us providing documentation, there is cross-questioning. Our finance team may even back out not because of the misuse of money, but because of the amount of documentation required. It's not worth it for our marketing and finance team to utilize the offer. It's too rigorous and it takes them off dealing with other aspects of their jobs.

IBM should be more flexible with marketing or offer marketing events themselves and invite the partners to attend. That might be far more productive.

We've been dealing with the solution for five or six years at least at this point. It may even be a bit longer. It's been a while.

We've sold this product to a variety of organizations, from SMEs to government departments to universities, and the sizing suits them all.

We do plan to continue to offer the product to other clients in the future.

Our team has never escalated any issues when it comes to getting support directly from IBM. In that sense, they are pretty much satisfied. It's my understanding that support is something that IBM is really good at. That's the reason why IBM does have the type of customers who do have the appropriate budget and who really value the services and the after-sales services and support that IBM offers.

We have our own installation and deployment team for IBM. They handle all aspects of it so that the client doesn't have to worry about the technical side.

We handle the implementation for our clients.

The solution is relatively expensive if you compare it with any competitors of IBM. I would say you need to compare this price with the Huawei or with HPE and probably with Dell EMC. 

Their products are relatively cheaper compared to IBM. I do understand that IBM does offer the best product, however, in terms of pricing, that's something that does limit us. Usually, when we participate in opportunities we do qualify when it comes to the technical side of things. Financially we are looking at the highest or maybe the second-highest price. That's something that actually makes us not want to sell IBM if we can avoid it.

We typically use the latest versions of the solution. We tend to follow whatever the customer requirement is. They are inclined to work by night in the office on the latest product that IBM is offering.

We work with on-premise as, over here at least, people are not too inclined towards the cloud. They prefer having hardware of their own in their own data centers.

I'd recommend this solution to other organizations.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at an eight.

Better pricing would be one thing that may convince me to give it higher marks. 

IBM Power Systems provides very good performance and stability compared to other brands or processors.

IBM should provide a platform where users can learn about the storage and security of IBM Power Systems.

We have had some minor issues with IBM's technical support. However, IBM support is good overall.

I have previously used Intel and Oracle Solaris servers. The performance of IBM Power Systems is very good compared to Intel. IBM Power Systems provides more stability compared to Intel. You have firmware and malware issues with Intel, but IBM Power Systems has no security issues.

You must consolidate and consider with other stakeholders regarding implementing IBM Power Systems.

The solution's pricing is very, very high compared to other platforms.

You can use IBM Power Systems instead of other brands if you want something with a critical application.

Overall, I rate IBM Power Systems a nine out of ten.

The solution's most valuable features are speed and capacity on demand. It works faster than Intel Power Processor.

They should improve the solution's pricing. Also, they should provide proper documentation to understand the setup process.

I have been using the solution for more than two years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a very scalable solution as it has capacity on demand. We can activate many features depending on the business requirements.

The solution’s technical support team is good.

I have worked with Lenovo Server, HP Server, Dell Server, and SolarWinds earlier.

The solution’s initial setup was complex.

The solution's native server is not much expensive. But, the additional software required for visualization and data protection is highly-priced.

The solution is suitable for prevention and maintenance. If you have the budget and a knowledgeable executive to manage the system, you should buy IBM Power Systems. I rate it a nine out of ten for its availability and visibility.

I primarily use Power Systems for high availability and security.

Power Systems' best features include its user-friendliness and self-checking/self-healing abilities. It's also the best solution for MIMIX and high availability.

Power Systems' price could always be lower.

I've been working with Power Systems for over thirty years.

Power Systems is totally stable.

Power Systems is very scalable.

IBM's tech support is one of Power Systems' best features.

The initial setup is very easy - you just power it on, and it's ready to work in an hour.

Power Systems is very cheap and provides good value for money.

I would 100% recommend Power Systems to other users and would rate it ten out of ten.

I am unsure of what the primary use case of this solution was, as my role was only related to deploying the solution.

I am unsure what features I found most valuable because I didn't use the power system deployment for the clients.

Unfortunately, I don't have any thoughts now on what could be improved.

We have used this solution for approximately six months. However, I am unsure if it is currently the latest version because we deployed the solution on-premises as vendors.

The solution is scalable.

We have had a good experience with the technical support team at IBM.

I would classify the initial setup as medium. It took approximately one day to deploy IBM power systems. Everyone on the team had their role, so I can't speak about what each person did.

I am unsure if the clients have seen a return on investment.

I am unfamiliar with the licensing costs.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. However, there are improvements that can be made on the technical side.

We are currently using IBM Power Systems for applications and database core banking.

We found when working with IBM Power Systems that LPM is the most valuable feature.

I would like to see IBM Power Systems integrate with all cloud types.

I have been using IBM Power Systems for the past seven years.

IBM Power Systems is the most stable solution in the world.

The scalability of IBM Power Systems is good.

IBM Power Systems is very expensive. We have mid-range, entry, and enterprise. Every machine has its own licensing.

The setup of IBM Power Systems is complex. There are many steps and it takes three days to a week.

Before you purchase IBM Power Systems you should consider capacity requirements. 

I work with Dell servers in addition to IBM Power Systems.

I would rate IBM Power Systems an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for IBM Power Systems is Oracle Databases.

The main feature that I have found most valuable is PowerVM - its virtualization feature which is the most powerful.

With the new POWER9, and even with the POWER8, processor, IBM has incorporated Linux compatibility into its platform. All its new developments on this platform are great. I really don't see anything at the moment which would be improving the platform. I'm totally grateful for the possibility of using Linux and AIX in the same hardware.

In the next release, I would like to see additional graphical dashboards to help the administrators access information more easily.

I have been using IBM Power Systems for five years. I work in a company selling IBM Power Solutions. I've been selling Power solutions for the last 10 years. We are IBM's partner in Bolivia.

I'm totally satisfied with the solution. It helps the IT team especially so they can work quite confidently.

IBM Power Systems' platform scales with the different types of equipment so you start using a little hardware, but not as little as it might sound because it is a very powerful platform, for the little servers. So you can grow up and scale out. You can scale up quite easily with the IBM Power Systems.

We have between 800 to 1,000 users. All of them have access to the apps that use the database.

In terms of staff required for deployment or maintenance, there are six guys who are database administrators and operating system administrators.

Right now we do not have plans to increase the usage, maybe in the future.

We needed to use IBM support just a couple of times and the onset time was quite comfortable so I can say I'm comfortable with quality of service support from IBM.

The initial setup is not complex. It's not quite easy, but with the service support it's quite easy.

With AIX it takes between two and six hours to prepare the platform for a new environment for the production stage and once the initial environment has been set up it is quite easy because you can replicate it or modify it according to your new requirements.

We have our own service team in our company so we didn't use external services.

We bought the license for a three year period. We always buy hardware with a three-year support and maintenance fee. It's just the standard fee.

To anyone considering it, I would say that the IBM Power platform is so secure and stable.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give IBM Power Systems an eight.

The use case is for hosting a lot of the bank's applications.

Some of the most valuable features are the processing power, stability, and security.

I would like to see the scaling model improved so it's not just either tiny or huge.

We have been using IBM Power Systems since 2001, so it's been 20 years.

IBM is quite stable. That's one of their most popular aspects. We just upgraded our power systems recently, so we're going to be working with them through the next five years at least.

The solution is being used quite heavily.

The scalability is a bit above average. It's not the best, but it's a good deal.

The SKU modeling part they have is not very flexible toward customers. Either you have to go very big or you have to go very small. There isn't an in-between. There's not a lot of variety in this.

I have onsite support and I talk to technical support a lot. My experience has been good.

Setup was straightforward, with the help of the professional services from IBM. Maintenance is handled by the IBM team, especially the hardware.

We used IBM partners. Usually it's IBM themselves, not the partners.

The licensing costs are okay. With IBM Power Systems, it's inclusive, so you can differentiate the price of the hardware from the software itself. The power systems are quite expensive. In the end, you equate a means of value. From a value proposition, it is either justifiable or not.

The additional costs are the maintenance and warranty professional services.

Compared to similar solutions, IBM Power Systems has a proven record. They have their own reputation. You have the availability of technical expertise in the market. They're quite compatible with most of the solutions that we work with.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

My advice for an organization that is looking to implement this solution is that they should have the adequate expertise of personnel that can run the system. They should study their TCO and ROI regarding whether it is worth investing in this, given that it's a very expensive solution. These are the two most important aspects.

I would also advise dealing with an appropriate partner or dealing with IBM directly.

When it comes to reliability, availability and profitability, nothing can beat IBM Power Systems. The machine has great availability and is very serviceable. One can do so many things while the machine is up and running. There is no need to shut anything down. This is how we have been conducting our business for the past few years. 

There are several features which I feel should be added to the solution, including those concerning the graphic processors. 

I am referring to the GPU based machines involved in machine learning. The new systems focus on the part involved in experiencing, but not on machine learning. The product should come with a comprehensive portfolio which will address all the high performance computing requirements, in additiona to machine and deep learning. This is an issue which I raised with IBM. 

Software testing and the compatibility of software products that are available in the market should be addressed. This is an issue we sometimes face, as this particular product is not tested, certified and available in Power Systems. We have lost deals over this. 

The price of the solution could be somewhat better and this is what lowers my rating of it to a seven or eight out of ten. We directly compete with Intel-based products, which several vendors make available, and a price improvement would certainly give us an advantage over the competition. 

I have been using IBM Power Systems for more than 10 years.

I rate the solution as a seven or eight out of ten for its price. As we are talking about a very competitive market, the pricing could be a bit better. This would give us a definite edge over the competition, as we find ourselves in direct competition with Intel-based products, which are available from a number of vendors. 

This system is ideal when it comes to performance and reliability. I don't see any need for improving on its current features and functionality. 

We are resellers of IBM FlashSystem. 

Owing to the issues with its pricing, I rate IBM Power Systems as a seven or eight out of ten.