TechCentral recently hosted a live webinar exploring “AI on IBM Power: the platform built for enterprise transformation”. The session, hosted by Jaydev Chiba from TechCentral, with panellists Kim van Zyl (sales manager, Edgetec), David Spurway (IBM Power AI & Security Principal, Emea) and Morgan Malyon (partner technical specialist for Power, IBM South Africa).
The central theme highlighted in the webinar is how IBM Power is uniquely engineered for enterprise AI, focusing on speed, flexibility and robust security.
Kim provided a rich history of Edgetec as one of the top trusted IBM Gold Partners in South Africa. The company’s 25-year history in the local market, founded by ex-IBMers, emphasised Edgetec’s services-driven culture, prioritising highly skilled resources to deliver and support optimal solutions rather than just sales.
This approach has built trust and ensures substantial value for its diverse client base across a number of industries such as finance, insurance, engineering and government. Its longstanding, transparent partnership with IBM, particularly in Power and Storage, is crucial for Edgetec’s success and for delivering tailored solutions to South African customers.
David Spurway then detailed IBM Power’s core architectural design and how it is purpose-built for mission-critical enterprise workloads. IBM’s end-to-end control over processors, virtualisation and operating systems (AIX, IBM i, Linux) ensures inherent reliability, performance and robust security, boasting significantly fewer vulnerabilities than x86 platforms.
A key advantage for AI is IBM Power’s ability to perform inference without relying on energy-intensive GPUs can result in substantial energy savings. This will be particularly beneficial given South Africa’s energy challenges. Spurway pointed out that while large foundation models are trained on public data, enterprise-specific data is vastly underrepresented in these models. This opens up a huge opportunity in the enterprise space. IBM Power addresses this through Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), allowing AI models to securely access and interpret an organisation’s curated, current internal data for trustworthy and relevant insights without requiring costly retraining. This kind of capability helps to accelerate decision making and also drives innovation, as shown in real-world examples like rapid cancer diagnosis and automated e-mail processing.
Morgan Malyon underscored IBM Power’s enduring relevance, asserting it is not a “dying brand” but a strong platform that complements and coexists effectively with x86 environments. Beyond traditional SAP and Oracle workloads, Power is diversifying into AI and open-source applications, modernising platforms like IBM i and offering superior availability, reduced infrastructure and lower licensing costs due to its powerful core design.
In the South African market, AI adoption is showing steady growth, with a focus on practical business value derived from advanced analytics and process automation. The local market tends to follow European technology trends, exhibiting a strong preference for hybrid cloud and increasing AI integration for critical applications, disaster recovery and uptime.
The panellists concluded by encouraging the audience to engage with Edgetec to explore how AI on IBM Power can truly transform their enterprises. For more information contact www.edgetec.co.za.
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