IBM Unveils LinuxONE 4 Express: A Game-Changing Hybrid Cloud & AI Solution

IBM has released the IBM LinuxONE 4 Express, a pre-configured rack mount system that combines hybrid cloud and AI capabilities to address challenges faced by small and medium-sized businesses, and is also being used by University College London for academic research and praised for its performance and security by industry experts and partners.

Brings latest advancements in performance, security, and AI capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses
Pre-configured rack mount system eliminates guesswork and provides cost savings for clients
Offers scalability and support for AI use cases, making it a valuable tool for both university research and industry players

IBM has launched the IBM LinuxONE 4 Express, bringing the latest advancements in performance, security, and AI capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses and new data center environments. This pre-configured rack mount system aims to provide cost savings and eliminate guesswork for clients when deploying workloads quickly. It caters to a range of use cases, including digital assets, medical imaging with AI, and workload consolidation.

As businesses rapidly transition their products and services online, they often end up with a hybrid cloud environment that lacks alignment and inhibits the integration of AI. According to a recent IBM IBV survey, 84% of executives struggle with eliminating silo-to-silo handoffs, while 78% face challenges due to an inadequate operating model for multicloud platforms. To address these issues, organizations need to carefully determine which workloads should be on-premises versus in the cloud.

Tina Tarquinio, VP of Product Management at IBM Z and LinuxONE, highlights that the IBM LinuxONE 4 Express offers startups and small to medium-sized businesses an opportunity to build a deliberate hybrid cloud strategy from scratch. It combines the power of hybrid cloud and AI in a user-friendly format that can fit into various data centers. As businesses grow and adapt to market shifts, the LinuxONE 4 Express can scale to meet increasing workload and performance demands, while also supporting AI use cases by providing co-located AI inferencing with mission-critical data.

University College London, for its research initiatives, has partnered with IBM to develop a sustainable hybrid cloud platform to support academic research. Dr. Owain Kenway, Head of Research Computing at University College London, praises the LinuxONE 4 Express for its ability to handle high I/O workloads in biosciences, such as Next Generation Sequencing. He also emphasizes its suitability for supporting AI workloads on medical data in “Trusted Research Environments” (TREs). The high performance, scalability, and affordability of the system make it a valuable tool for both university research and industry players.

The IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 4, launched in April 2023 and based on the IBM Telum processor, offers energy efficiency and reduced data center floor space while delivering the necessary scale, performance, and security. The LinuxONE 4 Express, also built on the Telum processor and delivered in a rack mount format, ensures high availability for clients with strict resiliency requirements. With GDPS, IBM DS8000 series storage with HyperSwap, and the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform environment, these systems are designed to achieve 99.999999% (eight 9s) availability.

Steven Dickens, VP and Practice Leader at The Futurum Group, notes that IBM LinuxONE is becoming an integral part of IBM’s infrastructure story. The LinuxONE 4 Express uniquely positions IBM to handle mission-critical workloads with high availability and offers robust cybersecurity measures, positioning IBM favorably in the market.

The IBM LinuxONE 4 Express addresses various use cases that startups and small businesses encounter. For digital assets, it provides a secured platform with confidential computing capabilities to protect sensitive data. The inclusion of hardware-based security technology, IBM Secure Execution for Linux, enhances security for digital asset use cases by providing scalable isolation for individual workloads. In medical imaging with AI, the LinuxONE 4 Express enables co-location of AI inferencing with mission-critical data, facilitating real-time analysis of large volumes of medical records for health insurance companies. Additionally, the system supports workload consolidation by simplifying IT environments and reducing costs through database consolidation.

IBM is actively working with partners in its LinuxONE Ecosystem, including AquaSecurity, Clari5, Exponential AI, Opollo Technologies, Pennant, and Spiking, to offer solutions that address sustainability and cybersecurity challenges. Optimized sustainability and security are crucial for clients running data serving, core banking, and digital assets workloads to protect sensitive private data and achieve sustainable organizational goals.

Eyad Alhabbash, Director of IBM Systems Solutions & Support Group at Saudi Business Machines (SBM), praises the IBM LinuxONE III Express for its superior performance compared to x86 servers when running the same Red Hat OpenShift workload. Alhabbash also highlights the user-friendly nature of the IBM LinuxONE for server, storage, and network management and operations.

The new IBM LinuxONE 4 Express starts at $135,000 and will be available from IBM and certified business partners on February 20, 2024. To learn more about industry trends, such as AI, sustainability, and cybersecurity, and gain behind-the-scenes access to the system, IBM clients and partners can join a live webinar on February 20 at 11 am ET.

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Background Information

About IBM:

IBM, or International Business Machines Corporation, is a globally American multinational technology company with a storied history dating back to its founding in 1911. Over the decades, IBM has consistently been at the forefront of innovation in the field of information technology. The company is known for its pioneering work in computer hardware, software, and services, with breakthroughs like the IBM System/360 and the invention of the relational database.