In the past year, IBM has delivered on our commitment to provide new opportunities for our Business Partners, including higher value solutions and services via the cloud. We’ve introduced partners to new Storage and POWER systems, the Watson Ecosystem, IBM Cloud Marketplace, the Apple partnership, as well as new SoftLayer and Bluemix solutions, where thousands of developers are now building applications.

Today, we continue that effort through a rapidly expanding ecosystem fueled by the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is broadening its framework for Business Partners to build customized servers with new server designs and prototypes suited to high-performance POWER architecture. For IBM Business Partners in China, the OpenPOWER Foundation is also providing Chinese technology companies the option to build custom solutions and accelerate local technology innovation.

The OpenPOWER Foundation was established in 2013, and now has more than 110 members across 22 countries, including IBM as a founding member. In January, Avnet, one of IBM’s leading global distributors, joined the Foundation to enable partners to develop new innovations while providing channel distribution and integration services for OpenPOWER offerings. In February, IBM and the OpenPOWER Foundation expanded tools, assets and resources available to Business Partners and developers looking to build or port customized server and storage solutions with OpenPOWER Developer Tools. These assets enable the development of new solutions with IBM’s open, licensable and high-performance POWER architecture.

The Foundation has expanded dramatically, strengthened its influence and enabled the creation of new products worldwide, culminating today in a wave of OpenPOWER-based innovations brought to market by a growing community of partners, customers and developers. These include:

• The first commercially available OpenPOWER server from TYAN, designed for large cloud deployments, with plans for delivery in 2015;
• The GPU accelerated OpenPOWER developer platform, the Cirrascale RM4950,  with collaboration from NVIDIA, Tyan and Cirrascale in the second quarter of 2015, that supports big data, analytics and scientific computing applications;
• The first of its kind open server design and prototype motherboard from Rackspace, combining OpenPOWER, Open Compute and OpenStack;
• A prototype of  IBM’s first OpenPOWER high-performance server on the path to exascale, jointly developed by IBM and Wistron using technology from NVIDIA and Mellanox, and predicted to be 5 to 10 times faster than today’s leading supercomputers.

At the center of China’s emerging OpenPOWER ecosystem are additional innovations, including:

• CP1, the first POWER chip for the China market from the Chinese chip design company, PowerCore
• A  new line of servers by Zoom Netcom called RedPower, an OpenPOWER two-socket system
• New China-branded system designs by OpenPOWER members, including ChuangHe, incorporating IBM POWER8™ processors

It is my belief that with the rapid pace of change in our industry, open innovation is the route to Business Partner innovation. The OpenPOWER Foundation marries the benefits of business model innovation with technology innovation, propelling a collaborative effort that will forever change how countries, organizations and industries keep pace with changing technology demands.

For more information on how Business Partners can innovate through the OpenPOWER Foundation, please read the press release and visit www.openpowerfoundation.org.