IBM Power for Google Cloud Offering Gets PCI Cert
November 13, 2024 Alex Woodie
IBM i shops that want to run their workloads in the Google Cloud may be interested in the latest news out of Converge Technology Solutions, which recently announced that it has completed the PCI-DSS certification for the company’s IBM Power for Google Cloud (IP4G) platform.
The availability of IBM Power servers in the public cloud has been growing in fits and starts over the past five years. Back in 2019, a Seattle, Washington, company named Skytap (since acquired by Kyndryl) worked to place Power servers within Microsoft Azure data centers. Connectria, one of the biggest private cloud providers, last year partnered with Amazon Web Services to co-locate Power servers very close to (but not directly in) AWS data centers as part of a hybrid offering.
The third and smallest of the Big Three Cloud Giants, Google Cloud, was the closest to actually installing IBM i servers in its data centers and selling access to customers. Back in 2019, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will’s talked about Google’s impending launch of an IBM Power Systems for Google Cloud. The company did in fact launch it in early 2020. However, it only supported AIX and Linux. It didn’t (and doesn’t to this day) support IBM i.
But then along comes Converge Technology Solutions (CTS), which appears to have succeeded in getting IBM i workloads to run within Google Cloud. It’s doing that via the company’s IBM Power for Google Cloud (IP4G) offering, which is a private cloud offering that sits within a Google data center but is still managed by the customer (or perhaps by CTS).
The company says IP4G includes Power 9 and Power 10 hardware running IBM i, AIX, and Linux connected to IBM FlashSystems NPIV arrays with 10Gb Ethernet networks. An IP4G solution brief says you can “bring your IBM Power based workloads to Google Cloud” and scale access to compute resources on demand.
Converge Technology Solutions offers Power and IBM i running in Google Cloud.
CTS says customers benefit from “avoiding the costs of acquiring, managing, and maintaining IT infrastructure,” as well as reducing “the complexity and expense of building a traditional DR environment.” IP4G customers can integrate their Power data and workloads with other Google Cloud services over a network with 1ms of latency, it says, and pay for it all through a single bill on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
More details of the IP4G offering, including pricing, is available on this page on Google Cloud. A single core of IBM i with 60GB of RAM and 4TB of storage will run you $3,000 per month, while a six-core setup with 550GB of RAM and 25TB of storage will set you back $25,000 per.
In September, CTS announced that it has achieved PCI-DSS certification for its IP4G setup, giving IBM i, AIX, and Linux cloud customers the greenlight to run credit card processing on the setup.
“Achieving PCI-DSS certification for our IP4G platform is a significant milestone for Converge. It expands our addressable market for this solution within the retail and financial industries and reaffirms our dedication to delivering secure and compliant industry solutions for our clients,” CTS CEO Greg Berard said in a press release.
CTS is a Toronto, Ontario-based company that has become one of the biggest IBM resellers and managed services. Founded in 2017, the company has gobbled up smaller players, including Key Information Systems, Corus360, Essex Technology Group, Software Information Systems, Lighthouse Computer Services, Nordisk Systems, Datatrend Technologies, and VSS Holdings.
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