End of Support for IBM POWER8: What Businesses Need to Know

IBM POWER8 support is ending, and businesses must upgrade to continue receiving mainstream IBM maintenance and support. Northdoor can help businesses turn this into an opportunity to innovate and improve their Power Systems platform whilst enabling a seamless transition to a more performant, reliable platform.

Upgrading from IBM POWER8: Northdoor’s Guide for Businesses

IBM has announced the end of support for their POWER8 server range in three tranches across 2024. The most popular models are shown below, but we’ve included the full list at the bottom of this blog.

• March 31^st 2024, sees the end of service for the S812, S822 and S824, along with Linux-only variants.
• On May 31^st 2024, the S814 – staple for many small/medium IBM i clients – ceases support
• Finally, October 31^st 2024 sees support end for IBM’s the Enterprise POWER8 range – the E850, E870 and E880

The lack of support means potential security vulnerabilities, compatibility issues, and other risks that could impact business operations.  To ensure a smooth and hassle-free transition to a more modern system, businesses can turn to technology consultancy experts like Northdoor.

Whilst, in all cases, the existing infrastructure will have served their businesses well, the end of support for IBM POWER8 servers is a significant development that businesses relying on this technology need to consider carefully. However, looking at the project not as a basic technology refresh but as an opportunity for change and improvement can bring far better outcomes to the business.

Partnering with Northdoor

Through our extensive skills on the power platform, we will work with you to help you decide on the best way forward.  With the new cloud-like consumption models that became available after POWER8, there may be more efficient ways to satisfy the processing requirement whilst better managing peaks and troughs in demand.

In a recent example, Northdoor worked with a major clearing bank on POWER8 technology that wanted to move to Power10 to avoid technology obsolescence.  Rather than approaching this purely as a technology upgrade, Northdoor introduced the Power Private Cloud architecture to allow the bank to achieve a 57% reduction in IBM i license count and the use of granular burst capacity by the minute to efficiently handle workload peaks.  Despite the significant core reduction, testing of the Power10 environment showed over 2X improvement in batch processing compared to POWER8.

For businesses adopting a cloud-first strategy, Northdoor can also help you decide whether to upgrade to a new Power server on-premises, consider a cloud platform or a mixture of the two in a hybrid environment.

Northdoor’s team of experts can help businesses identify their current and future requirements, develop a customised upgrade plan, and implement the necessary changes. This includes migrating data to new servers and becoming an extension to your IT team to help ease the transition to new systems.  Northdoor can also provide ongoing proactive or reactive support and maintenance to ensure the new system runs efficiently and securely.

In conclusion, the end of support for IBM POWER8 is a significant development for businesses, but with the help of Northdoor, upgrading to a modern system can be a seamless process and also add significant benefits to your business. Northdoor’s team of experts can evaluate options, plan the next steps, and implement changes efficiently to ensure a smooth transition to a more reliable computing system.

End of service dates in full:

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