Why IBM Power11 is the New Standard for the Resilient, AI-Driven Business
For years, IBM Power servers have set the standard for high performance, reliability, and security in mission-critical environments. Achieving an impressive 99.9999% minimum uptime (six nines) has been a hallmark of the Power platform for nearly a decade. In July 2025, IBM advanced this legacy with the launch of the latest evolution in its server architecture. That new standard is the IBM Power11.
There was a time in which we graded servers strictly on performance metrics. Using that measurement approach, here are some of the achievements you might expect with IBM Power11:
- Power11 delivers up to 55% better core performance compared to Power9
- Provides up to 45% greater capacity in entry and mid-range servers vs. Power 10 thanks to higher core counts and increased efficiency.
- Customers migrating from Power9 or Power10 to Power11 typically achieve a 3:1 server consolidation ratio, enabling them to run the same workloads on one-third as many servers
While these achievements are undeniably impressive, raw performance, capacity, and consolidation alone no longer define excellence. In today’s hybrid landscape where resiliency is non-negotiable and AI integration is pushing infrastructure to its limits; businesses need servers engineered for this new reality. IBM Power11 rises to meet that challenge
The Resilient Architecture of Power11
Did you know that in a typical 16-core chip, only 15 cores are typically activated for use in the operating system due to manufacturing imperfections? One of your cores is essentially wasted. This was prevalent not only in x86 processors but in some cases also impacted Power10. IBM designed the Power11 to treat this disabled core as a designated spare that lies dormant until another core fails, at which point it becomes activated. This means that workloads continue running without any noticeable performance drop.
Regarding resiliency, some things never change. Like its predecessor, Power11 can be packaged with IBM Power Cyber vault functions like immutable backup snapshots that can’t be altered or deleted by anyone, including administrators as well as rapid ransomware detection. These protect data integrity and boost system recovery after cyber incidents. It also includes behavioral anti-ransomware programs that monitor real-time I/O activity for patterns suggestive of ransomware.
Automated Patching and Logging
Did you know that 45% of customers will spend 5,000 hours per year just patching servers and handling related workflows? This massive time commitment is usually driven by manual processes such as detecting vulnerabilities, verifying fixes, requesting approvals, and executing the patches. It is a highly repetitive error prone process that continues to be a pain point for CIOs and one that frankly shouldn’t continue in the current era of automation.
Reducing all this technical minutia would go a long way to achieving zero planned down time. Power 11 integrates guided workflows that prompt for patch approval once a vulnerability has been detected, which then triggers patch deployment with minimal manual intervention. Because every organization is different, the Power11 platform can be configured to follow internal governance to automatically routing patch requests through the proper chain. Often times, organizations can benefit from additional automation and integration with other monitoring and ITSM systems. This kind of integration is a primary way Evolving Solutions helps clients get the maximum value out of IBM’s innovation.
IBM also committed to accelerating the upload of logs to its support teams. While it may sound trivial, it wasn’t uncommon for the uploading of diagnostic logs to IBM to take 5-8 hours. Like a professional racing team that works to shave fractions of time for each lap in the race, Power11’s high speed log collection and transfer translates into faster communication with IBM support, which is one more contributor to greater resiliency.
Built for an AI-driven Hybrid World
You can’t release a server today that isn’t designed for AI loads. Each Power11 core features four MMAs for rapid AI workloads and inferencing, aligning with the growing demand for deploying pretrained models in production environments. Its purpose-built accelerators are integrated directly into the server, which eliminates the need to move data to external accelerators for many tasks. Power11’s high-bandwidth memory reduces data access latency while speeding up the processing of massive datasets for tasks like trend analysis, predictive modeling, and real-time analytics. Power11 outperforms most standard x86 servers while using less space and energy in your datacenter. This efficiency translates to significant cost savings for AI applications that consume more power than traditional workloads.
Most organizations operate in a hybrid world today. Power11 works with existing orchestration and monitoring tools, letting IT teams manage all their resources from one central interface. You can easily move containers and workloads between on-premises systems and the cloud without any code changes or platform modifications.
Migration to Power11 Can Be Easy
You are probably getting the idea that Power11 has more automation built inside the chip itself that makes it more powerful, more resilient, and easier to service. If you are currently running Power9 or Power10, IBM even made the migration process straightforward to use a “right-click and move” approach. Applications are then transferred to Power 11 with a very brief outage, often measured in seconds, to ensure near zero downtime.
That’s not to say you don’t need a plan however, but designing a proper plan is challenging when technology is evolving at breakneck speed. For most businesses, navigating this landscape is like working on a 1,000-piece puzzle. The problem is that the pieces keep changing shape as each day brings new announcements, apps, threats, and updates. Those original pieces that seemed to fit together perfectly now need to be reimagined. In this fast-moving environment, businesses need solutions that can evolve just as quickly.
This is where Evolving Solutions can bring guidance and value to your organization. As a long-standing IBM partner, we’ve built deep expertise across their platforms from the very beginning. We are also services focused and have a mastery of API and workflow management. In a world that’s constantly shifting, our ability to adapt and connect the dots is what makes the difference.
If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of IBM Power11, our specialists are here to help you make it happen.
