IBM Launches New Power Systems and Software Built for Enterprises to Address Risk, Productivity, and Flexibility
- New IBM Power Autonomous Operations software identifies and resolves capacity constraints up to 15x1 faster than manually performing the operation
- IBM Bob™ Premium Package for i helps accelerate application development on IBM i
- Entry-level Power S1112 server helps enterprises innovate at every scale
ARMONK, N.Y., July 15, 2026 /CNW/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced IBM Power Autonomous Operations, an AI agent that can help continuously monitor Power systems and autonomously resolve issues to keep operations running smoothly. It complements the recently launched IBM Bob™ Premium Package for i, which brings agentic-driven software designed to accelerate application development on IBM i. These capabilities can accelerate building modern applications so enterprises can innovate at the pace required by their business. Additionally, the entry-level Power S1112 server provides a new compact, efficient option powerful enough to run AI inference locally.
IBM Power has long been IBM's platform for mission-critical enterprise workloads. As AI becomes part of that critical infrastructure, Power is built to support it. IBM introduced Power11 last year as autonomous IT for the AI era, built for availability, resiliency, and scale across on-premises and IBM Cloud environments. IBM Power Virtual Server is a fully managed cloud service on which enterprises can run AIX, IBM i and Linux workloads while offloading much of the routine management for system operations. Now, IBM is embedding autonomous IT across the Power platform, from code to runtime, with new capabilities and systems.
According to the IBM IBV 2026 Tech Leader Study: Building the IT foundation for agentic AI at scale, by 2027, enterprises expect to deploy an average of 1,661 AI agents--a 38% increase. At that rate, tech leaders are tasked with managing hundreds of thousands of autonomous decisions daily. And manual governance can't keep up with that math.2 Additionally, according to the IBM Institute for Business Value, Enterprise 2030 study, AI is changing what companies do and how they do it.3 Closing that gap in scale requires an IT foundation that can run and optimize itself while teams focus on innovation.
These newly announced capabilities utilize AI agents to build automation directly into IBM Power across operations, security, and application development so clients can innovate with AI while prioritizing control and resilience. Power Autonomous Operations automates running and optimizing systems, with an embedded agent that lets teams manage Power through simple chat-style prompts. IBM Bob Premium Package for i makes IBM i development accessible to a broad range of engineers, expanding who can build and modernize their applications on the platform.
"Enterprises should not need to choose between moving at the speed of AI and keeping their systems stable and secure," said Hillery Hunter, General Manager for IBM Power and CTO, IBM Infrastructure. "We're making Power increasingly self-operating, so the routine work of helping to keep systems available, optimized, and secured can happen autonomously, and our clients' teams can spend their time on innovation instead of upkeep. That's how a business scales AI with control and resilience."
IBM Power S1112: Extending the Capabilities of Power Servers
As enterprises push AI workloads beyond the data center, the IBM Power S1112 is a new one-socket Power11 system built for compact on-prem deployment. The S1112 runs AI workloads locally using Power11 on-chip Matrix Math Acceleration (MMA) for faster inferencing. Power S1112 offers 2x better core performance versus Power S9144 and 3x better core performance versus Power S8145 -- with up to 69% greater energy efficiency than the S9146.
To provide clients with the right level of support for this new system, IBM Technology Lifecycle Services is introducing IBM Power Expert Care Premium Essentials, a new incident-focused support tier available exclusively for the Power S1112. Premium Essentials delivers priority access to IBM experts, accelerated response, and intelligent support automation.
IBM Power Autonomous Operations: Managing Infrastructure Through Conversation
IBM Power Autonomous Operations resolves capacity constraint issues up to 15x faster than manual intervention7. Today's enterprise systems can seem to demand constant attention, but manual operations management can make it difficult to manage. IBM Power Autonomous Operations redefines this model by automating and optimizing day-to-day operations across the IBM Power environment. An embedded AI agent that enables natural, conversational interaction can help teams to manage, tune, and streamline their environments without relying on deep domain expertise for every task. The result is a resilient, self-optimizing infrastructure architected to reduce operational burden while accelerating performance and uptime.
IBM Bob Premium Package for i: Making IBM i Development Accessible to More Engineers
IBM i is a fully integrated operating system that remains a vital part of the core business of many companies across major industries, yet modernizing IBM i applications has historically required specialized skills for RPG applications. To help address this challenge, IBM Bob is an AI-powered development assistant that offers an agentic SDLC experience for enterprise developers.
IBM Bob Premium Package for i is engineered to provide built-in support for IBM i conventions and patterns across the full development lifecycle, to help engineers make changes faster, onboard sooner, and evolve applications while prioritizing team capacity along the way. From understanding complex code to moving modernization and AI projects forward, IBM Bob can expand the pool of developers who improve the IBM i applications that organizations depend on every day. Early adopters are already seeing results: Heartland Co-Op estimates 60% faster time for new-to-platform developers to understand complex applications.8
Client Momentum
Clients and partners are already running IBM Power on premises and in the cloud, drawn by its performance, resilience, and hybrid flexibility:
"For a business like ours, reliability and simplicity matter because our customers depend on us every day. IBM Power and IBM i have consistently delivered the stability and security we need to support our operations with confidence. And that continues with the introduction of IBM Bob and the IBM Power S1112. What excites me most about the new Power S1112 is the ability to do more with less through increased capacity, energy efficiency, and the growing focus IBM has on automation, making systems easier to manage for small and midsized businesses. We are also excited about how IBM Bob for IBM i can help our team accelerate modernization by quickly interpreting older RPG code, tracing field logic, generating documentation, and making decades of system knowledge easier to understand and act on. Together, IBM Power, IBM i, and IBM Bob give us a forward-looking foundation to modernize with confidence while continuing to deliver the reliability our business depends on." Jasmine Kaczmarek, vice president of technology, M.R. Williams.
"What I noticed about IBM Bob almost immediately was the level of detail provided as compared to other AIs. I like using AI to build and execute plans for specific projects. Given the exact same prompt, Bob's planning was always 10-fold more detailed than other AIs. More specifics, more details, and provided a better understanding of the steps through the project from beginning to end." Bob Richardson, ERP Support Analyst, Wynne Systems, Inc.
"The new IBM Power S1112 provides us with the flexibility to expand beyond traditional workloads and explore new AI opportunities by running Linux partitions alongside our IBM i environment," said Andy Buchholtz, Owner, Innovative Software Solutions. "Combining that flexibility with the security, reliability, and resilience we trust from the IBM Power platform gives us confidence as we continue to innovate and modernize our business."
"We're no longer reacting to weather. We're prepared for it," said Chad Simpson, CIO, City Home. "Our infrastructure is built to keep the business running, no matter what. We've honed our process to perform role swaps every quarter, and this capability gives us great confidence in our business continuity posture. It's a powerful thing, and it's all thanks to IBM Cloud and Power Virtual Server."
Availability
IBM Power S1112 is expected to be generally available on July 24, 2026, IBM Power Autonomous Operations is expected to be generally available on September 23, 2026, and IBM Bob Premium Package for i was made generally available on June 24, 2026. To learn more, visit ibm.com/power.
Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help 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. Thousands of 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 consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.
Additional Sources
- Power S1112 and autonomous IT capabilities blog
- IBM Power S1112 product page
- IBM Institute for Business Value Enterprise 2030 study
Media contact:
Sarah Fraser
IBM Infrastructure Communications
[email protected]
1 Disclaimer 1: The performance and capacity management efficiency claim is based on IBM internal testing conducted in a controlled, representative IBM Power infrastructure environment consisting of eleven IBM Power systems. Capacity thresholds and alerting policies were preconfigured prior to test execution. Under this configuration, the manual operational process entailed--navigating to the performance dashboard for each system, exporting performance data to CSV/XLS format, reviewing and analyzing the data to identify required capacity adjustments, and implementing the changes--required on average 52.59 minutes to detect and resolve capacity‑related conditions across the eleven systems. In a comparable scenario, IBM Power Autonomous Operations, which includes alert ingestion and AI-based, agent-driven diagnostic analysis producing recommended and remedial actions with human-in-the-loop approval to remediate, completed the same process in on average 3.33 minutes.
2 https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/c-suite-study/cxo
3 https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/enterprise-2030
4 Based on published CPW results comparing Power S1112/4 core to IBM Power S914/4 core. Valid as of 7/14/2026 and available at: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/10c31775c5d40fed
5 Based on published CPW results comparing Power S1112/4 core to IBM Power S814/4 core. Valid as of 7/14/2026 and available at: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/10c31775c5d40fed
6 Based on system capability of Power S1112/10c performance 291,300E CPW (extrapolated from 116,500 CPW for 4-cores) @ 540E Watts (539 Performance/Watt) compared to Power S914/8cperformance of 122,500 CPW @ 383 Watts (319 Performance/Watt); 539 / 319 = 1.69 more Performance/Watt
7 Disclaimer 1: The performance and capacity management efficiency claim is based on IBM internal testing conducted in a controlled, representative IBM Power infrastructure environment consisting of eleven IBM Power systems. Capacity thresholds and alerting policies were preconfigured prior to test execution. Under this configuration, the manual operational process entailed--navigating to the performance dashboard for each system, exporting performance data to CSV/XLS format, reviewing and analyzing the data to identify required capacity adjustments, and implementing the changes--required on average 52.59 minutes to detect and resolve capacity‑related conditions across the eleven systems. In a comparable scenario, IBM Power Autonomous Operations, which includes alert ingestion and AI-based, agent-driven diagnostic analysis producing recommended and remedial actions with human-in-the-loop approval to remediate, completed the same process in on average 3.33 minutes.
8 Heartland Co-op Modernizes Grain Operations with IBM i and IBM Bob
SOURCE IBM
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