HPE Apollo Systems vs IBM Power Systems comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the Rack Servers category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.3. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 4.1% mindshare in Rack Servers, compared to IBM’s 7.0% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of IBM users who would recommend it.

HPE Apollo Systems

Read 24 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

2,059 Views
1,791 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM Power Systems

Read 73 IBM Power Systems reviews

3,824 Views
3,824 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

HPE Apollo Systems

IBM Power Systems

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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HPE Apollo Systems and IBM Power Systems compete in the high-performance computing market. IBM Power Systems appear to have the upper hand due to their advanced features that users feel justify the investment.

Features: HPE Apollo Systems are known for scalability, energy efficiency, and flexibility. IBM Power Systems are recognized for high processing power, reliability, and robust security features.

Room for Improvement: HPE Apollo Systems users suggest improvements in integration, software tools, and compatibility with existing systems. IBM Power Systems users desire lower costs, more accessible maintenance procedures, and improved affordability without losing performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE Apollo Systems are straightforward to deploy with comprehensive support. IBM Power Systems, despite more complex deployment, offer responsive technical support. HPE excels in faster initial deployment, while IBM provides detailed guidance for complex setups.

Pricing and ROI: HPE Apollo Systems have competitive setup costs and flexible pricing, offering favorable ROI aligned with budget-conscious decisions. IBM Power Systems, with higher upfront costs, promise long-term value and substantial returns, appealing to those prioritizing lasting investment.

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To learn more, read our detailed HPE Apollo Systems vs. IBM Power Systems Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems vs. IBM Power Systems

March 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

HPE Apollo Systems

Ranking in Rack Servers

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

IBM Power Systems

Ranking in Rack Servers

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of HPE Apollo Systems is 4.1%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Power Systems is 7.0%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Rack Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM Power Systems	7.0%
HPE Apollo Systems	4.1%
Other	88.9%

Rack Servers

Featured Reviews

Gökhan DURMAZ

Account Manager at TD SYNNEX

High-quality integration and strong support have optimized our rack server operations

HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity. When I speak about integrity, I speak about GPU integration or other integrations such as GPU integration, backup software integration, and hypervisor integration. Regarding the integration of high-speed interconnectors in HPE Apollo Systems, they impact computational tasks because the high-speed interconnect affects performance. I don't remember the specifics. Regarding the cooling technologies, they help to reduce operational costs. The positive impact I see from HPE Apollo Systems is that support is good and quality is good. In general, HPE Apollo Systems appears to be for rack servers with some optimization capabilities.

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Foluso Jibowo

Product Manager at Hiperdist Ltd

Has empowered enterprises with secure and cost-effective solutions

When discussing disadvantages, I do not see many areas for improvement because we have received good testimonies from every client. IBM gives customers peace of mind. One challenge, which I would not really call a challenge, is that initially people have the notion that IBM Power Systems is quite expensive. However, IBM does not lose deals based on price. This is a message we need to keep communicating to people who feel that IBM is on the high side in terms of cost. We encourage them to have a discussion with us about their total cost of ownership over three or five years. There is a notion in the market that IBM is expensive, which is false. However, once we engage and show them their return on investments and their total cost of ownership savings, they tend to embrace IBM.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."

"I find HPE Apollo Systems to be scalable and efficient for AI initiatives, and the environmental efficiency has a significant impact on operational costs."

"We're going to buy another Apollo 6500. We may configure it with half the number of GPUs because that may be all we need. In a sense, we can see the Apollo 6500 being so powerful that we only need half the GPU capability that we have now."

"HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity."

"we can use the same platform for several use cases: Hadoop, Ceph, and we are considering the server for another use case right now. It's a single solution, we only have to integrate it once and we can use it for several technologies."

"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."

"The cost benefit of this solution is most valuable. It is quite effective for the work for which we are using it. We are mainly running video servers on these, and we are quite happy with the resilience, density storage, and streaming capacity of the system."

"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage needs."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"Power Systems 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. It can be customized based on our needs. Flash copy is helping us amazingly. We have virtualization for vDisks, which is again very helpful. We are working on this virtualization technology, and we have a team that is working on redundancy and architecture."

"The uptime feature is great."

"Additionally, the processing power is far superior, especially with the RSA feature for reliability, serviceability, and availability."

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

"BM Power Systems get updated every two years and are scalable and stable."

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

"The SMT that they've improved has really helped open up boundaries for other applications that can use it."

"Power runs our resilient data systems, our high-end databases, stuff that can't go down."

More IBM Power Systems pros

Cons

"We could, perhaps, use more GPUs in the future, go from eight to 16 GPUs per instance. That could run head-to-head against the DGX-1, the DGX-2 that NVIDIA has developed in their own chassis. That would be interesting to see."

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

"We would like to see improved cooling because that is quite an issue. If you put that much compute power into a single rack, cooling really becomes an issue. And there is room for improvement there."

"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."

"I would want to see the flexibility of being able to run various network protocols including InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, as well as iSCSI, with iSCSI going up to 100 gigabytes per second -that would be outstanding."

"We have tried to used standardization using Ubuntu Linux and it's been hard. They had some difficulties getting the RAID configuration up and running because there are no drivers for it. It's not supported by HPE."

"The technical support for HPE Apollo Systems could be improved."

"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"Unfortunately, the hardware models and all those things have gone down a little bit, and there's no such diversity of models, and again, IBM is getting more and more expensive."

"There are improvements that can be made on the technical side."

"There is a notion in the market that IBM is expensive, which is false."

"In my country, there are power supply interruptions. IBM could find ways to make the product stable through these interruptions."

"Its price can be improved. It is too high."

"I think IBM needs a little more work on managing the overall environment with eliminating Systems Director."

"The price has room for improvement."

"The price is a bit high and could be improved."

More IBM Power Systems cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."

"It is an expensive solution but it is worth the money. The standard licensing cost is for the GPU and the features that someone is using. There are additional charges but they depend on the solution."

"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."

"The price of the solution is more expensive than Dell which is their main competitor. However, there are times we have managed to receive a comparable price."

"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."

"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."

"IBM Power Systems is a really expensive product."

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

"The pricing of the solution is very good because we can beat any other competitor with the pricing. Lately, they have offered good pricing for their customer."

"I give the cost a one out of ten."

"Why should I be charged for that use rather than a single CPU, a single socket?"

"IBM Power is more expensive than other rack-mount servers, and you have to have a license for everything, including cores and memory."

More IBM Power Systems pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

University

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	42

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

Some features could be added to HPE Apollo Systems in the future, and I feel that some capability is needed. HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability. Two f...

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What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

I have been distributing this product for three years. I don't have specific use cases, and everything about the major use case for HPE Apollo Systems is good. I don't know the purpose clients are ...

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What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?

I am not using these products today, and I do not work with some specific firewalls. My company is TD Synnex, a distributor company, and I work for this company. My email is , and my first name is ...

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What needs improvement with IBM Power Systems?

In my opinion, the product can be improved by maintaining it and not sunsetting it; that would be my recommendation for IBM. I used to work for IBM for nineteen years, and I know, unfortunately, I ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Power Systems?

I am an architect and system administrator, and I'm responsible for anything related to IBM Power Systems. In IBM Power Systems, I have found a lot of valuable features such as LVM, TCP, ODM, RSCT,...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering IBM Power Systems?

I would recommend IBM Power Systems to others. I have given this review a rating of ten out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 20% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Synergy vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

HPE ProLiant Compute vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs IBM Power Systems

Compared 25% of the time

Intel Server System vs IBM Power Systems

Compared 22% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs IBM Power Systems

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle SPARC Servers vs IBM Power Systems

Compared 13% of the time

Huawei KunLun Mission Critical Server vs IBM Power Systems

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Power Systems Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

March 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Power Systems

March 2026

Download IBM Power Systems product report

Also Known As

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo

IBM OpenPOWER LC

Overview

The HPE Apollo high-density server family is built for the highest levels of performance and efficiency. They are rack-scale compute, storage, networking, power and cooling – massively scale-up and scale-out – solutions for your big data analytics, object storage and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. From water-cooling that’s 1,000X more efficient than air, to “right-sized scaling” with 2X the compute density for workgroup and private cloud workloads, the HPE Apollo line is a dense, high-performance, tiered approach for organisations of all sizes.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

IBM Power Systems are built to crush the most advanced data applications - from the mission-critical workloads you run today to the next generation of AI.

IBM

Sample Customers

Weta Digital

Cipher

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems vs. IBM Power Systems

March 2026

Free Report: HPE Apollo Systems vs. IBM Power Systems

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Apollo Systems vs. IBM Power Systems and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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