With many open source technologies offering greater flexibility and lower costs, it is no surprise that businesses of all sizes are replacing or supplementing proprietary solutions with open source tools.
In particular, Linux, the incredibly successful family of open source operating systems (OSes), has already outstripped most proprietary competitors as the platform of choice for modern applications. It’s mature and robust, it supports a huge variety of hardware and devices, and most important of all, it’s free to use—freeing companies from the cost and complexity of proprietary OS licensing.
Migrating existing applications to Linux, however, is not always straightforward. When you have millions of lines of bespoke code running in a proprietary environment, it may simply be too difficult to port your application over to a different OS—and potentially also a different hardware platform—without rewriting everything from scratch. In these cases, the best approach may be a hybrid architecture, where you use Linux to develop all new applications and services and integrate them with your core systems, which remain on their existing platform. This is especially valuable when you are already taking advantage of the advanced capabilities of a specialist platform, such as AIX or IBM i environments running on IBM Power Systems. This hybrid approach gives you a clear path for future development, allowing you either to continue with your existing core applications indefinitely, or gradually phase them out as you develop open source replacements.
The IBM Power Systems platform is well-suited to this approach, because it has native support for running large numbers of Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines, in tandem with IBM i and IBM AIX systems. That means you can easily compose a larger system from components running in any of the three OSes, within a single hardware architecture, and even running on a single box.
Partnering for Success
With decades of experience enabling companies across a wide range of sectors reap the rewards of commercial and non-commercial solutions, Meridian can help you start your open source journey. As an IBM Platinum Business Partner, we’ve developed the expertise that can help you get the best results out of all your applications on the IBM Power Systems platform—regardless of OS.
In particular, our Meridian Power Cloud offers an ideal way for clients to take the first steps on their open source journey. As one of the largest private cloud installations of Power Systems hardware in the world, the Meridian Power Cloud can host all your AIX, IBM i and Red Hat Linux applications, distributed across six data centres in the UK to provide seamless availability and disaster resilience.
As a result, instead of getting bogged down in hardware procurement, installation, maintenance and security management, you can leave the day-to-day operations to us, and focus on your application modernisation roadmap. And if you need support on the software side too, our consultants have the skills to help you develop, enhance and integrate your core and cloud-native applications. Whatever your needs, we’re there to support you.
Best of Both Worlds
With the Meridian Power Cloud, you can enjoy the excellent performance, reliability, stability and security of best-of-breed IBM solutions while also harnessing the power of open source technology. Taking this approach can help to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of your IT systems, eliminate complexity from system maintenance and give you much more freedom to develop customized applications tailored to the unique needs of your business.
If you have any questions, the experts at Meridian are here to help. For more information contact our experts by phone at +1 (888) 684-3644 or send an email to sales@themeridian.com for more details.