• IBM has announced the availability of a new pre-configured rack mount system for data centre environments called the LinuxONE 4 Express.
• The new solution is aimed at SMEs in particular, offering significant cost savings.
• IBM says the LinuxONE 4 Express can help SMEs save over 52 percent on their total cost of ownership over five years.

The push for digital transformation and migrating to the cloud has proved expensive, resulting in many companies shifting back to a hybrid solution when it comes to handling data and workloads. Cost is a particularly important consideration for SMEs and small businesses, which is why IBM recently announced the availability of its new LinuxONE 4 Express data centre solution.

IBM says this new pre-configured rack mount system is designed to offer cost savings and to remove client guesswork when spinning up workloads quickly and getting started with the platform to address new and traditional use cases such as digital assets, medical imaging with AI, and workload consolidation.

“Startups and SMEs are at the heart of enabling employment-rich economic growth for South Africa. Nevertheless, they are not immune to macro challenges throttling the economy. As a result, they are turning to digitization to be agile, efficient and innovative in order to thrive. The IBM LinuxONE 4 Express presents a unique opportunity for them to craft a deliberate hybrid cloud strategy tailored to their needs,” noted Ria Pinto, GM and Technology leader at IBM South Africa.

“With the latest LinuxONE 4 system, IBM brings the transformative potential of hybrid cloud and AI directly to the fingertips of entrepreneurs and SME owners. The system seamlessly integrates advanced technologies into their business operations, empowering them to navigate the digital landscape with confidence,” she added in a release shared with Hypertext.

Looking closer at the aforementioned new use cases, IBM has highlighted the ways in which its new rack mount system can assist, with reductions in the total cost of ownership in particular being mentioned.

When it comes to digital assets, IBM LinuxONE 4 Express provides a secured platform with confidential computing capabilities specifically designed to protect sensitive data.

“Scalable isolation for individual workloads can help protect not only from external attacks, but also insider threats. This includes data in use, a particularly critical stage of security for digital assets use cases,” the company pointed out.

Shifting to medical imaging with AI and the IBM Telum processor found in this solution offers on-chip AI inferencing, allowing customers to co-locate AI with mission-critical data on a LinuxONE system, allowing data analysis where the data is located.

“For example, health insurance companies could analyze large volumes of medical records in near real time to validate process claims, increasing the speed of business decision making,” it posited.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, for workload consolidation the system is designed to help clients simplify their IT environments and cut costs by consolidating databases onto a LinuxONE solution.

“Designed to bring significant cost savings for clients over time, clients that move Linux workloads from compared x86 server to an IBM LinuxONE 4 Express can save over 52% on their total cost of ownership over 5 years,” it emphasised.

To get a higher level view of the capabilities of this new solution and what it could mean for SMEs looking to address total cost of ownership in particular, and on-demand webcast is available to access and view here.