IBM is adding Power Systems Linux services to its Innovation and Client Centers around the world so clients can create big data and cloud applications using Linux on IBM Power Systems servers.

The new services include personal and online Linux training on programming, porting and the optimization of applications.

The services cover the use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Canonical Ubuntu Server Linux technologies with Power Systems.

Clients can also get personal guidance from Linux and IBM experts on how to use IBM's Power8 parallel processing and virtualization.

IBM's business consulting experts and business partner will be available to advises and collaborate on jointly taking Power System and Linux based systems to market.

Last year IBM committed US$1bn in new Linux and open source technologies for its Power Systems servers.

The initiatives included the opening of five new Power Systems Linux Centers in Beijing, China, New York, Austin, Texas, Montpelier, France and Tokyo, Japan.

According to IBM there are now 1500 ISV applications available for Linux on Power.

“Businesses need the latest open server innovations to help them capitalize on big data and cloud computing,” said Doug Balog, general manager of IBM Power Systems.

He said new technologies will achieve this faster and more cheaply than the racks of commodity servers heating up their data centers today.

The higher number of threads per core, a significant clock speed increase and a big offload capacity make IBM Power8 a ‘fantastic processor for cognitive and Big Data applications’ according to IBM partner Amir Husain, CEO of SparkCognition.

"We are using Power8 systems to analyze large cloud security and industrial internet data sets,” Husain said.