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IBM Power Systems pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.4 out of 5

73 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

IBM Power Systems delivers exceptional performance and reliability for critical applications, featuring efficient resource management via PowerVM for scalability. Enhancements in processing power, stability, and security support databases and data systems, alongside seamless upgrades for storage and memory to ensure no downtime. However, concerns include high pricing, limited platform support from vendors, issues with technical support and documentation, and lack of support for Intel architecture-based applications, impacting broader business use cases.

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Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM Power Systems offer exceptional performance and reliability, making them highly valuable for managing critical applications.

Virtualization with PowerVM allows for efficient resource management and scalability, enabling users to easily adapt to changing needs.

Customers value the system's processing power, stability, and security, which are crucial for high-end databases and resilient data systems.

IBM Power Systems provide outstanding technical support and regular security updates, enhancing their reliability and customer satisfaction.

The ability to upgrade system resources such as storage and memory seamlessly contributes to its scalability and ensures no downtime.

CONS

IBM Power Systems has issues with software vendor support, as vendors are not moving onto the platform.

The pricing is considered too high, and there is a need for price improvements.

Scalability depends on the initial sizing, and simplification is required for the scalability process.

Technical support and documentation need improvements.

The platform does not support X86 or X64 Intel architecture-based applications, which limits business use cases.

IBM Power Systems Pros review quotes

Admin

Oct 17, 2017

The backups work great, data recovery works great.

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Manager at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 17, 2017

When the other platforms are going down, and they're working on them all the time, mine's always up.

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Technical Architect

Oct 17, 2017

We have done testing with Intel, we have done testing with POWER, and the performance we were getting with POWER is actually very good compared to what we were getting on the other systems.

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IBM Power Systems

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Technical Resource Manager at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 17, 2017

We generally find the compute and the processing power, and the ability to handle the load, is far better on the POWER systems.

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EVP Technical Solutions at Helpsystems

Oct 17, 2017

From a software developer standpoint, virtualization is really the key, as we can more easily spin up a new partition, virtual instance of IBM i.

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Regional VIP cloud hosting at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 19, 2017

Scalability is great; with the VIOS, the Power and the Power platform, we can virtualize and create many more LPARs, making it definitely a more flexible solution compared to earlier versions.

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CP

Solution engineer with 51-200 employees

Oct 19, 2017

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

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Director of technology at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 19, 2017

I definitely think that IBM is a market leader in the server sector.

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Senior engineer systems admin at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 19, 2017

We do see ROI from the move from POWER7 to POWER8, as we do capacity management and are able to move quite a lot of workload.

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Sys admin at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 19, 2017

We are very happy with Power's performance.

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IBM Power Systems Cons review quotes

Admin

Oct 17, 2017

Everyone likes speed. Not that speed has been an issue up until now but you can never be too fast.

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Manager at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 17, 2017

I would rather have gum surgery than get on the phone and talk to somebody to try to put me with a technical consultant.

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Technical Architect

Oct 17, 2017

I would like to have some stats where the CPU is getting utilized and to see how much of the actual CPU I'm using.

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IBM Power Systems

Free Report: IBM Power Systems Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM Power Systems. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.

884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Technical Resource Manager at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 17, 2017

What I'd like to see would be more of a usage-based licensing model.

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EVP Technical Solutions at Helpsystems

Oct 17, 2017

Better manage heterogeneous footprints of all the different operating systems that are out there across one common interface.

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Regional VIP cloud hosting at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 19, 2017

I would say that in general we would prefer it if the software was more transparent, in terms of how you are using it.

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CP

Solution engineer with 51-200 employees

Oct 19, 2017

Licensing is always going to be a problem, because it used to be based on, "This is a CPU, this is the memory, this is your footprint." Now, with virtualization, that one CPU can be carved up 100 different ways, so why should I be charged for that use rather than a single CPU, a single socket?

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Director of technology at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 19, 2017

Upgrading the hardware from one version to another was pretty simple but the software, not so much.

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Senior engineer systems admin at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 19, 2017

I would say the cost. They need to work on the cost because I think it's quite expensive and that's a changing trend in the industry, to be more focused on the product.

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Sys admin at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 19, 2017

They can make it easier to do the patching and iFixes, which is especially important now, with all of the security issues.

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