In order to meet the demands of today’s data centers, companies require an open-system design that provides greater flexibility and speed at a lower cost. The innovations fostered by IBM, including OpenPOWER, demonstrate a commitment to building technology infrastructures that provide more customer choice, as well as allow them to leverage increased data workloads and analytics to drive better business outcomes, today and in the future. These efficiencies will provide increased client savings, thus fostering revenue for IBM.

Calista Redmond, VP of IBM z Systems Ecosystem and president of the OpenPOWER Foundation, joined Stu Miniman (@stu) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during IBM Edge, held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV, to talk about the transformative role of OpenPOWER to IBM clients, as well as open source and Open Compute.

OpenPOWER

Vellante mentioned that when OpenPOWER was first introduced, there was a lot of healthy skepticism within the industry. However, IBM has proved that this is the real deal, he said. OpenPOWER is three years old, and it has successfully grown from five to 262 members.

“These are folks who are really investing in the architecture, investing their time, resources and energy to make OpenPOWER a very compelling platform in the market — not just a viable one, a compelling one,” said Redmond.

Open Source

Miniman asked about how IBM is striking a balance between giving the ecosystem the freedom to use open source, but is also able to keep control and to grow revenue.

Redmond explained that the balance is kept “by making power much more compelling and relevant to the industry, to our stakeholders across the community … to the end user who wants freedom of choice and a long-term, durable strategy.” She also clarified, “Just as much as each [client] has a cloud strategy, they also have an open strategy in the data center.”

While the Open Compute Project is focused on a particular form factor, OpenPOWER is focused on a particular architecture, Redmond explained. “You overlap those where we can do an OpenPOWER/Open Compute form factor together.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Edge 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE