We've found that sometimes, certain setups require better servers. Ideally, the next level of model that IBM offers would be perfect for those situations.

Sometimes, the availability of additional services can be a challenge for some software. Certain IBM software takes time to deliver to the client. It can be slow.

So deployment is an area for improvement.

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

Speaking about the disadvantages, the tools available to manage IBM Power Systems are not that good. My company also uses VMware, which is easy to use. In IBM Power Systems, things can get complicated when you try to manage the platform.

Price and complexity related to the management of the solution are areas of concern in the solution where improvements are required.

IBM systems are old technologies. I couldn't renew and get to use IBM Power Systems, and it offers users very expensive support. The aforementioned areas can be considered for improvement in the product.

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

Also, each time we have to go outside the storage, it fails.

The price has room for improvement.

Feature-wise, the power system is great, however, IBM should work on pricing. No available price list is on the web. Due to this, the customer cannot compare pricing and have a perception that IBM Power server price is high. Also customer wants to have a comparison with RICS server with INTEL server which never should be done we can not compare Mango with Apple. So in my opinion price transparency should be there, so people can understand. No new feature is not in my mind which may be add in IBM Power.

The solution is highly-priced. The first thing for me in terms of improvement is reducing the price.

One of the main challenges with IBM Power Systems is the functionality of live partnership mobility. When you're running an L4 on one physical machine, and you want to migrate to another physical machine running live, it's very cost-intensive. In addition, IBM Power Systems is less user-friendly than competitors like VMware or Hyper-V. With IBM Power, you have to go to a command line and configure things one by one. In the next release, I would like IBM Power Systems to include a visual operational management console where I can manage all my IBM Power machines end-to-end. I would also like to see hyperconverged systems with their own storage.

They simply need to promote or provide more support to open applications like .NET.

We'd like to see the solution support skill servers. 

The pricing is high.

IBM's pricing and distribution policies differ from those of Dell, making it challenging for partners to adjust. IBM's approach to managing its partners and securing deals is looser than Dell's. As a result, IBM's partners find it challenging to navigate their policies. Although our company also has a partnership with Dell, there is a significant difference in how the two companies manage their respective partners. Nowadays, we are convinced that when we work on a particular opportunity or a deal, IBM pushes it away from us and presents it to a different partner.

The number of times IBM refreshes its operating system appears to be very slow. This case is true when compared to other tools like VMware, Red Hat, or any other Linux products. In general, the updates or the latest versions of other products are much faster than IBM Power Systems, creating an impression in the market that AIX will perish. Even though IBM might be spending time and money on the products, when it comes to the implementation part involving products from IBM or Oracle, they usually don't have a compatible version that works well with Power Linux. Also, compatible versions are mostly available in AIX. From 2017 to 2023, there has been no significant increase in the number of updates or versions from IBM.

I think the cost should be cheaper.

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.

The compatibility with other products could be better. They have a proprietary package to install on the server. With the application or the database, you can install on top of it.

Some competitors may have more features or a certain advantage over this product.

The solution is quite expensive.

We'd like the solution to have a cloud base. Most of it is on-premises.

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

The price is a bit high and could be improved.

IBM Power Systems could improve by having a cloud feature.

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

Its management can be made easier because it is not easy to manage. They should also find a new way for migrating from an old Power Systems to a new one. The migration process is currently very complicated.

It should be made easier to scale. Currently, its scalability depends on the initial sizing, whereas in Nutanix HCI, you can add whatever you need and whenever you need it.

Thus far, the solution has been sufficient. I can't think of an area that really needs improvement at this time.

For the time being, our need is limited to certain features that are completely available in the Power Systems that we use. I can't say that we need an extra feature, or, at least, not in the near future.

The pricing of the product could always be lowered.

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 does not offer the ability to run any X86 or X64 Intel architecture-based application on Power Systems. There are a lot of applications, lots of business use cases that do not support this architecture as of now. If somehow application tasks can be ported on to IBM Power Systems, that would be a big improvement.

Power Systems has dominance in terms of features, and the capability is much more powerful than the other competitors right now. Intel is the other primary platform. If you look at Intel x86 and compare it with Power Systems, all of the features are much more reliable, available and serviceable as compared to the Intel platform. The one thing that we lack is that a lot more applications are supported on the internet compared to Power Systems. That's one thing that we primarily lack.

The power supplies often need replacing.

Technical support and documentation need to be improved.

The solution is currently working on the old PowerVCs. We welcome this improvement.

It would be ideal if the solution was more simple to work with. 

The initial setup is difficult.

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

Power Systems' price could always be lower.

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

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've worked with the solution for a very long time, and therefore, when it comes to the things that it doesn't support, I've accepted that and I understand why they won't. If you asked me what I'd like added, I'd say that it'd be nice if they ran GPUs, however, I know that's not the direction they're going. That said, I would appreciate it if they offered GPU support. 

It used to have it and they pulled it out. That's something that's missing from it, however, there are workarounds.

Its price can be improved. It is too high. 

One of the features that we would like, and I think they are also adapting to the latest trends in the market, is to make it more open, more flexible. Traditionally the Unix operating system was not very flexible. For example, if you are creating a virtual machine, it is not done the same way you would create it with VMware. With VMware, anybody can create a virtual machine without any knowledge of the server side. But with AIX it's a bit difficult. I think they are already in the process of improving it, making it more flexible and easier to use.

The improvements that I would like to see are probably the same as what everyone else wants, more speed, less electricity and less HVAC required to run it.

It does everything that we require though we would like it to be faster.

I would also like to see a small developer model come out that I could purchase on my own to develop application software.

I would like for there to be more clarity around the licensing. You'll get your PVUs and CPWs and some apps are licensed on one, some are on another.

I think IBM needs a little more work on managing the overall environment with eliminating Systems Director. They need something that you can use to manage the entire environment; it's kind of where they're going with PowerVC, but with the POWER5, 6 and 7 they're out in the cold now. It's just upgrading to 8 and managing everything with PowerVC, then it will be a lot easier. But any of the older technology is going to be out in the cold, managing one at a time.

You absolutely have to get that better performance all the time. The managers are always saying, "Well, let's make it faster, faster, faster."

Licensing has always been an issue, but with IBM machines a serial number is licensed with support. If you don't pay for it, you don't get it. 

I would like to see firmware available to all of the systems. We have some older systems that we've taken off support, that we're not going get rid of right now, but I'm not able to legally update the firmware on that. That's just a little nitpick that I have.

I'd like them to make stuff that little bit more seamless, a little bit more user friendly. They have come a long way since the early days. You can deploy a system right now in minutes compared to days, in the early days. But that's what growth is all about.

For the i customers, I think that Power, the horsepower, has always been there. So, I would like to see something more on the lower end, where they would make it more cost effective for the small guy, rather than the big guy.

They need to work a little bit more with the smaller guys. Help to make it easier for them to move, to get going into the system. They need to be a little bit more competitive with the Intels of the world.

We are a special case, because what we want is the cheapest Power box we can get in all of our locations. That is not the way the industry is moving.

Cloud would be a great option, if you didn't get the worst internet connections in the world in very remote locations. That's where we are in a kind of unique situation. We have to have the processing power at a location, but we don't have the luxury of a good internet connection. In some cases, we have DSL. That goes down for days. You can't have a Cloud-based solution. You have to have something that can process on-site and retain and then batch upload data.

The lack of software vendors moving onto the platform, as opposed to fleeing the platform, is an issue.

The HMC and PowerVM need a more catchy graphical interface. 

Secondly, the command line interfaces should be converted into graphical interfaces. It is such a complex thing in making LPARs when you are using it through a wire server. It should be easy rather than be complicated. I'll give an example of the graphical interface. The V7000 is really great. Anyone can use it, there's no complexity in there. PowerVM and the VIOS interfaces should be like the V7000.

Regarding new features, we like where it's going. I really can't think of something newer that they are not currently working on.

Except for Power on Linux. The licensing for software products, including IBM's products - it costs you more to run Linux on Power than it does AIX. That's something I would like to see them improve. We would like to go to Power Linux, but all the software that we are using - and I'm talking like IBM software, like Webster - they don't let you oversubscribe the software. It's not cost effective.  

If you didn't know better, if you didn't do these things, you probably wouldn't care and you would put Linux on Power. But if you take advantage of some of these real advanced features, for oversubscribing as an example, it's not supported on Linux on Power. So that stops us, in particular, from going that way.

This isn't really related to Power, it's related more to the OS system level, but instead of chasing the industry they should lead the industry. A lot of the things that are being deployed on Power now are things like Node.js and things of that nature. But they're chasing the market, they're not leading the market.

Since the cloud is so in demand right now, there is a feature that VMware has which is vMotion. I would like this with PowerVC, NovaLink, PowerVM. I would like IBM to improve that feature so that we can sell it to our customers and improve their satisfaction.

IBM is definitely a market leader in servers but to maintain that position it needs to improve how the information gets to the customer. Sometimes IBM is very good at doing new things but nobody knows about it.

I could see a benefit in some organizations if licensing were more cloud oriented. We're not big in the cloud yet. I guess at some point that would probably help.

Pricing has room for improvement. It's definitely more competitive now than it was. That was an issue we had a while back where you'd look at the cost and it was just so much more for it. It was a hard sell.

I know that they are doing a lot with Linux, so maybe a more direct way of converting to Linux on some applications; some way to actually sell it a little bit better. Because you still get into the expense of going to the Power hardware, but if you're already on the Power hardware, I don't see the issue. A lot of people just don't seem to want to progress onto Linux, but they want to keep Linux on the Wintel or Intel devices. And to me, you just don't get the chips and the ability of the chips that you get on AIX, and on the Power hardware.

I don't know how you can improve on something that is as stable as it is.

IBM changes licensing, so to speak, with the wind. You never know what they're going to go with. It would be nicer if it were simpler. And, maybe not so costly, that would help.

Not sure. Everything works great.

IBM does a great job of incorporating the latest technology, but it's hard to give IT a 10 out of 10, we're always growing and fluctuating. 

Right now, in our region, they are moving to contracting things over the cloud. There are some services that we are providing - we are leasing space, we are leasing machines. If customers could truly license cloud-based or, possibly, acquire cloud-based capacity to process things over the cloud, that would be great. That would be an improvement.

IBM could perhaps be a bit more aggressive in terms of marketing, and let customers really know that they're out there and can offer a helping hand to move them along, to implement all these great features. Because, in attending the classes here at the IBM Power Conference, over the years, every time they ask, "Are you on this latest and greatest feature?" many people are not there as yet. Yet the feature may have been announced a few years ago. Sometimes it's because companies need to have migration projects, and a bit of money and time to get this going.

IBM could be more aggressive in that area.

I know lab services does a lot of work but systems, if they could include some kind of lab services and bundling of services to get you to the greatest and latest feature at the already included cost... If you include the cost in the base machine, you pay for something once, or it's in your maintenance... because to go and ask for money every time, it's a problem.

We just want to see continued reliability and performance. And continued value for the price. The licensing could be simplified.

I think they could use a little more work in the upgrading of the OS, how that could happen as non-interrupting, but I think they are working on that.

They can make it easier to do the patching and iFixes, which is especially important now, with all of the security issues. That would provide a lot of relief.

I don't know yet. We have got scalability, resiliency. We can move it from one system to another.

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? But businesses have to make money.

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

Right now it depends on the level of the system and how much more you might have to pay for the same software. And being a cloud provider, we get into a lot of situations where our customers might need just a fraction of a processor, but they still have to pay for a bigger portion of the software costs.

The only thing that I've seen over the last years - and I think it's getting better - would be to have stable service packs. Often I upgrade to a new version, a new service pack, and we need to put iFix over the service pack. I would like to have the service pack be really stable, or IBM saying, "This service pack is stable, but you should add this and this iFix as of right now." That would be better.

It would be an improvement if the cost went down, as well.

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.

With POWER it has everything that we need from a scale up and scale out capacity, capability to stick lots of work and footprint on it. For IBM, the challenge that everybody has in the industry, and in the processor world, is that we've kind of hit the "knee" of the curve with Moore's law. Processors aren't getting faster. The neat thing about IBM is the innovation that they're doing to offload work from the processor and do more simultaneous things. 

I'm really excited about the artificial intelligence even if you don't always think of systems management companies like us being excited about that technology. But we have a lot of information too, and helping our customers more easily mine that - I see some great opportunities. 

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

When we talk about cloud licensing, or maybe tenant-based licensing, definitely there's a shift in the marketplace in that more of our customers are looking at things like infrastructure as a service, where they're going to be having their IBM i footprint hosted by somebody else, maybe on somebody else's partitioning. Sister partitioned systems. So then licensing does become an issue in how do we take that on-prem customer perpetual license and convert it into something that they can consume as they go, because people are used to that with Amazon and other technologies.

What I'd like to see would be more of a usage-based licensing model. COD got close, but you still have to buy the basic things, and you can't turn them off really well. Then they came out with being able to use it for 30 days. After that, you might as well just buy the processor.

It would be nice to each month go through and say, "Okay. This is what we're using," pay for it, true up, and be much more like that cloud-ish type thing with an on-prem. With all the benefits of being on-prem.

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. It's like hypervisor stats which I should be getting.

Also, if I could get a similar thing on a cloud, so I could switch from cloud to datacenter, datacenter to cloud. It should have that flexibility somewhere.

The CPU. It could always get faster. Pricing's always an issue - with every company; it could always be better.

That's why we came to the IBM Power Systems and IBM Storage Technical University conference, to see what's coming next, to see what we can maybe take advantage of.

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

I know we have some Windows stuff in-house and I know they have some data deduplication, so I want look at and see some of this newer stuff; we'll take advantage of that. It's something we'd like to see in POWER8. I know some people save stuff in two spots, and then it's four spots, and then it's in 400 spots. And how do you clean that up?

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

The solution could improve the memory database for better integration with SAP HANA.

We have a problem with the storage software. The media to restore data is also not found.