New IBM LinuxONE Servers Help Reduce Energy Consumption as Clients Increasingly Make Sustainability a Business Priority

Next generation LinuxONE servers extend IBM’s capabilities to help clients across industries, including Citibank, reach sustainability targets

SINGAPORE, Sept 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled the next generation of its LinuxONE server, a highly scalable Linux and Kubernetes-based platform, designed to deliver scalability to support thousands of workloads in the footprint of a single system[1]. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 features capabilities that can reduce clients’ energy consumption. For example, consolidating Linux workloads on five IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 systems instead of running them on compared x86 servers under similar conditions can reduce energy consumption by 75%, space by 50%, and the CO2e footprint by over 850 metric tons annually[2].

According to an IBM IBV study, 48% of CEOs across industries say increasing sustainability is one of the highest priorities for their organization in the next two to three years. However, 51% also cite sustainability as among their greatest challenges in that same timeframe, with lack of data insights, unclear ROI, and technology barriers, as hurdles. For these CEOs, scaling their business with modern infrastructure can often be one of the barriers to achieving sustainability goals.

“Data centers are energy intensive, and they can account for a large portion of an organization’s energy use. But data and technology can help companies turn sustainability ambition into action,” said Marcel Mitran, IBM Fellow, CTO of Cloud Platform, IBM LinuxONE. “Reducing data center energy consumption is a tangible way to decrease carbon footprint. In that context, migrating to IBM LinuxONE is designed to help clients meet their scale and security goals, in addition to meeting sustainability goals for today’s digital business.”

IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 is an engineered scale-out-on-scale-up system designed to enable clients to run workloads at sustained high density and increase capacity by turning on unused cores without increasing their energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions.2 In addition, clients can track energy consumption with IBM Instana Observability on LinuxONE.

IBM’s portfolio of sustainability technologies includes solutions to design, deploy and manage energy efficient infrastructures and innovations with a hybrid cloud approach. IBM LinuxONE is one solution within the portfolio designed to optimize data centers by reducing energy consumption and improving energy efficiency. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 will be generally available globally on September 14, 2022, with entry and mid-range systems to follow in 1H 2023.

Respond to unpredictable demand

Shifts in the global economy have driven volatility and require flexibility in operational and technical decision-making. Built with the same security, scalability and reliability that has been the hallmark of IBM infrastructure, the next-generation LinuxONE also offers cloud-like flexibility. With a system built for rebalancing of resources in combination with on demand capacity, workloads can scale-up and scale-out dynamically and non-disruptively.

“For CIOs, change is happening at an unprecedented rate and requires organizations to invest in infrastructure that is stable, high value and energy-efficient,” said Bjorn Stengal, IDC Global Sustainability Research and Practice Lead. “IBM LinuxONE provides organizations with a secured, scalable architecture to meet their government regulations and customer expectations.”

At Citi, the bank’s sustainability strategy is driven by a commitment to advance solutions that address climate change and support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Operationally, Citi is focused on reducing the environmental footprint of its facilities, including through improving hosting densities with lower power consumption. Citi is hosting MongoDB on IBM LinuxONE, leveraging the platform’s security and resiliency, as well as elastic capacity to address unexpected demand.

“As our business grows and becomes increasingly digital-first, traditional IT solutions add more physical servers and increase required floor space,” said Martin Kennedy, Managing Director, Citi Technology Infrastructure. “IBM LinuxONE with MongoDB provides vertical scale and critical protection against data breaches and cyber-attacks, helping optimize data centers while lowering our overall carbon footprint.”

Sustainable without compromising security

The new LinuxONE system also features pervasive encryption to protect data at rest and in-flight, a priority for clients in regulated industries such as financial services. Building on IBM’s cloud security leadership in confidential computing, IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 protects data in use while providing end-to-end encryption. This comprehensive data protection profile provides businesses with a data protection strategy that underpins current and anticipated future cyber security protocols.

Hybrid cloud platform for cloud and on-premise workloads

Today’s hybrid and multicloud environments require clients to deploy workloads where it makes the most sense for their business needs. IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Servers provide a public cloud environment in which the cloud tenant maintains complete authority over Linux-based virtual servers for workloads that contain sensitive data. Built on IBM LinuxONE and running on IBM Cloud, this service provides customers complete authority over their encrypted data, workloads, and encryption keys – not even IBM as the cloud provider has access.

IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 supports a large number of Linux and Red Hat OpenShift-certified workloads, including data serving, core banking and digital assets. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 receives support from IBM Ecosystem partners, such as Illmuio, METACO, MongoDB, NGINX, Nth Exception, Fujitsu Limited, Pennant, SQ Solution, Sysdig, Inc. and Temenos.

With cloud native development on LinuxONE, teams of developers can deliver portable and agile solutions without having to learn a new operating system. IT managers need a system that is easy to operate that supports common tools and provides a foundation for the future. LinuxONE enables managers to focus on delivering new services, instead of managing complexity across a vast number of servers. Based on Linux and Kubernetes, everyone benefits from open standards and an ecosystem that includes modern DevSecOps and cloud native tools.

“Together, Temenos and IBM LinuxONE can help major banks move to a modern architecture in a safe, predictable and scalable way, while reducing total cost of ownership and meeting their ESG obligations,” said Philip Barnett, President of Strategy Growth at Temenos. “Temenos core banking running on the new LinuxONE servers can operate at a fraction of the cost of general-purpose servers and offer great scalability, resilience and speed to market.”

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IBM LinuxONE TCO Calculator: by answering just a few questions such as hardware, workload type and software, the IBM LinuxONE cost estimator provides a high-level total cost of ownership based on industry-proven assumptions.[3] Register for the IBM zDay no-cost virtual conference on Sept. 15, 2022 to learn more about LinuxONE through a dedicated track of sessions IBM LinuxONE Expert Care offers a way of attaching services and support through tiers at the time of product purchase. This offering provides the client an optimum level of support over multiple years for mission-critical requirements of their IT infrastructure.

About IBM 

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,800 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service. For more information, visit www.ibm.com 

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Media Factsheet
“The Green Computing and Purpose-Built Foundation for Sustainable Future”

Sustainability is a rapidly growing focus area for many organisations. The World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2021” cited extreme weather, climate action failure and human-led environmental damage as the top three most likely risks for businesses over the next ten years.

From a recent IBM’s global CEOs study:

Sustainability fast becoming a business priority at organisations: Almost half (48%) of global CEOs say increasing sustainability practices is one of their highest priorities for their organisation in the next two to three years – up from roughly a third in 2021. The greatest challenge in the next two to three years: Almost half (47%) of APAC CEOs also cite sustainability as among their greatest challenges in that same timeframe, with lack of data insights, unclear ROI, and technology barriers, as hurdles. For these CEOs, scaling their business with modern infrastructure can often be one of the barriers to achieving sustainability goals. Pressure is mounting from stakeholders: CEOs reported receiving the greatest pressure from board members (73%), followed by investors (57%), regulators (51%), ecosystem partners (48%) and government (48%). Sustainability drives business results and growth: Over 80% of CEOs believe that their company’s sustainability investments will produce improved business results in the next five years. Nearly half of CEOs (45%) think that sustainability will accelerate business growth. 85% of companies have sustainability goals but only 35% have acted on them.

 Green computing has a positive impact on the environment

Green computing (also known as green IT or sustainable IT) is the design, manufacture, use and disposal of computers, chips, other technology components and peripherals in a way that limits the harmful impact on the environment, including Reducing carbon emissions Reducing energy consumed by manufacturers, data centers and end-users Choosing sustainably sourced raw materials Promoting sustainability through the use of renewable resources
This also includes reducing electronic waste, green manufacturing agenda that governs how the factory itself operates; lengthening the lifespan of computing devices and components; increasing users’ ability to reuse and recycle products. The information and communication technology (ICT) sector is responsible for between 1.8% and 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissionsi. The International Energy Agency estimates that 1% of all global electricity is used by data centers and that by 2025, data centers will consume 1/5 of the world’s power supply. According to a report published by the Association for Computing Machinery, the energy demands and carbon output of computing and the entire ICT sector must be dramatically moderated if climate change is to be slowed in time to avoid catastrophic environmental damage.

Purpose-built Foundation for Sustainable Future: IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4

Building a sustainable infrastructure Reduce energy consumption by 75% Reduce data center floor space by 50% Reduce CO2e footprint by over 850 metric tons annuallyii compared to similar industry standard servers running similar workloads Scalability to support thousands of workloads in the footprint of a single systemiii Scale-out-on-scale-up system that runs workloads at sustained high density and increasing capacity by turning on unused cores without increasing their carbon footprint. This scalability can, for example: improve responsiveness to unexpected customer demand shifts speed new software implementations to deliver advanced functions support business growth over time save on total cost of ownership over time   Track energy consumption in real-time with energy monitoring tools on LinuxONE Underpins current and future cyber security requirements With the ability to run 25 billion secure transactions per day, IBM LinuxONE clients can create an environment that is as secure as a bank vault for sensitive data. End-to-end pervasive encryption to protect data at-rest and in-flight, a priority for clients in regulated industries such as financial services Build on IBM’s cloud security leadership in confidential computing IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 with the Crypto Express 8S Adapter, is designed to enable clients to run CRYSTALS-Dilithium sign operations. CRYSTALS-Dilithium algorithms were selected as part of a post-quantum cryptographic standardization process by NIST.iv Foundation for the future Support from IBM Ecosystem partners, such as Illmuio, METACO, MongoDB, NGINX, Fiorano, Fujitsu Limited, Sysdig, Inc. and Temenos. Support a large number of Linux and Red Hat OpenShift-certified workloads, including data serving, core banking and digital assets. With cloud native development on LinuxONE, teams of developers can deliver portable and agile solutions without having to learn a new operating system. LinuxONE enables managers to focus on delivering new services, instead of managing complexity across a vast number of servers. Based on Linux and Kubernetes, everyone benefits from open standards and an ecosystem that includes modern DevSecOps and cloud native tools.

By answering just a few questions such as hardware, workload type and software, the IBM LinuxONE TCO Calculator provides a high-level total cost of ownership based on industry-proven assumptions.v

What analysts say about IBM LinuxONE
“For Asia Pacific enterprises and agencies, Sustainability considerations are essential for every aspect of the business. Sustainable technology investment is clearly paramount. IBM has had a long history in enhancing sustainable technology outcomes. The LinuxONE mainframe is no exception. It offers measurable sustainability benefits that include energy use, data centre footprint and end-of-use benefits for clients. This innovation allows for users to improve their sustainability report card and maintain the technology performance of their mainframe investments,” Phil Hassey, CEO of capioIT.

IBM LinuxONE Client Reference in ASEANZK
Amret (Cambodia)
Despite having been one of the fastest-growing countries in the world in the past two decades, 78% of the Cambodian population over 15 years of age still do not have access to banking services. For nearly 30 years, Amret is devoted to bridging physical distances and making its microfinance banking services always available to millions of people and businesses across Cambodia, wherever they are and whenever they want. The high availability and reliability of Amret’s microfinance banking services was made possible for years without any disruption by the sophisticated technology underneath, IBM LinuxONE. The next step in Amret digital transformation not only requires the bank to be equipped with high-reliability infrastructure to support its mission-critical workloads, but also the future-ready system as its foundation for fostering the economy and sustainable future.

Sacombank (Vietnam)
As a leading retail financial institution in Asia, and one of the largest commercial banks in Vietnam, Sacombank saw the increased use of digital channels by millions of its customers and the need to ensure its IT infrastructure keep up with growing transactions. IBM LinuxONE has been the core system underpinning Sacombank uninterrupted banking services, providing vertical scalability and the highest level of security and compliance without sacrificing speed of innovation. The system has brought Sacombank improved system performance, transaction time and software licensing cost, with over 533,000 USD saving of TCO over 6 years. LinuxONE today gives Sacombank the capacity to innovate and quickly introduce new digital financial services that are significant to its customer’s financial health and wellbeing, while helping the bank advance towards its sustainability goals.

UnionBank (Philippines)
UnionBank has deployed services on IBM Cloud, in order to leverage the confidential computing capabilities of IBM’s digital asset infrastructure which are fully integrated with METACO’s digital asset orchestration system,  METACO Harmonize. This allows UnionBank to improve insurability with additional FIPS 140-2 Level 4 certified physical controls for managing and migrating keys, mitigate potential operational risk and loss events through trusted threshold signatures and hardened policies, and address insider collusions with third-party audited source code deployments. These capabilities and the highest level of commercial privacy assurance available today are supported by IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services available on IBM Cloud and on-premises via IBM LinuxONE.

Citi (globally, including Asia Pacific)
At Citi, the bank’s sustainable progress strategy is driven by a commitment to advance solutions that address climate change and support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Operationally, Citi is heavily focused on reducing the environmental footprint of its facilities, primarily through improving hosting densities with lower power consumption. Citi is hosting MongoDB on IBM LinuxONE, leveraging the platform’s security and resiliency, as well as elastic capacity to address unexpected demand. IBM LinuxONE with MongoDB also provides vertical scale and critical protection against data breaches and cyber-attacks, helping the bank optimize data centers while lowering our overall carbon footprint.

A large Islamic bank in Malaysia
As part of its banking transformation journey and business expansion, a large bank in Malaysia has adopted Islamic core banking solution and loan origination solution. To ensure that millions of its customers nationwide can receive the best savings and banking experience from this transformation, the bank needed an enterprise class platform as its core banking foundation. LinuxONE is the core system that provides the bank with high availability, performance, security and cost efficiency, and is a key to support the bank’s rapid and sustainable business growth today and tomorrow.

Stream I.T. Consulting (Thailand)
In Thailand, Stream I.T. Consulting, a digital business advisor and an IBM business partner, brought in IBM LinuxONE to support the digital transformation of government and business organisations and help them provide digital services to millions of citizens across Thailand. The powerful computing power, together with the highest security standard and system availability has made IBM LinuxONE the trusted platform for test running and deployment of digital systems and services. This allows organisations in Thailand to deliver fast and efficient services and handle the tremendous number of transactions without any disruption. LinuxONE also provides scalability that today’s digital business needs when it comes to expansion of services or launching new applications.