The Key Points For Power9 End of Standard Servic
- January 1, 2026: Maintenance pricing increases take effect
- January 31, 2026: End of Standard Service (EOSS) date
- No preventive service after January 31, 2026
- No new updates, firmware patches, or security fixes under standard maintenance
- You have options but need to move quickly
January 2026 Is Closer Than You Think
IBM recently announced that Power9 systems will reach End of Standard Service (EOSS) on January 31, 2026, with maintenance pricing increases taking effect on January 1, 2026. If you’re running Power9 infrastructure, this news might feel sudden, but it’s actually standard vendor lifecycle management. Power11 has been available for six months now, so this move is neither unexpected nor surprising.
The real question isn’t “why is this happening?” but rather “what does this mean for your organization’s infrastructure strategy?” This is a natural decision point, one that every organization with aging infrastructure must eventually face. How you respond to it will shape your operational efficiency, costs, and competitive positioning for years to come.
Understanding What’s Actually Happening
Let’s be clear about what EOSS actually means. After January 31, 2026, IBM will no longer provide preventive service, new updates, firmware patches, or security fixes under standard maintenance agreements. Your Power9 systems won’t suddenly stop working, but the safety net changes significantly.
To continue receiving any level of support after EOSS, you’ll need to purchase IBM’s Hardware Service Extension packages. These offer considerably more limited support than what you’re used to. Think remote support only, no new patches, no security fixes, and on-site visits only at IBM’s discretion. It’s a defensive position, not a growth-oriented one.
Power9 systems have been in production for over eight years. If you purchased these systems when they were released in 2017, you’ve almost certainly realized the financial value that justified that initial business case. The ROI calculation that convinced your leadership to invest has been delivered. Now you’re at a crossroads, and the path forward requires a different kind of thinking.
This isn’t about panic. It’s about recognizing that you’ve reached a natural inflection point in your infrastructure lifecycle, and the decisions you make now will either position you for sustainable growth or lock you into increasingly expensive technical compromises.
The Cost Equation
When organizations evaluate their options after an EOSS announcement, they often focus narrowly on hardware replacement costs. That’s a mistake. The cost to upgrade isn’t just about new servers. It’s about personnel capability and availability. It’s about application version updates required for security compliance and new features. It’s about the business disruption of coordinating these changes across teams and timelines.
This is where technical debt starts to accumulate. It happens slowly, like the proverbial frog in a pot. Years pass, and suddenly you discover that to get Oracle support, for example, you need to move to a newer OS version that’s only supported on later hardware. What seemed like a simple “kick the can down the road” decision has compounded into a major project requiring significant investment.
This pattern plays out repeatedly across organizations running aging Power Systems. One common scenario: paying for Hardware Service Extension with virtually no tax benefit, when replacement would be a capital expense offering tax advantages while simultaneously recouping hardware maintenance costs. Organizations end up spending more money for a worse position without realizing it until they compare the total cost of ownership over a three to five year horizon.
There’s also the operational reality to consider. Aged equipment is more vulnerable to failure. Heat is the enemy of electronics, and components degrade over time. This raises the risk of unplanned outages, which carry their own costs in lost productivity, emergency response, and business disruption. When you’re operating on extended support without regular firmware updates and security patches, you’re accepting operational risk that grows with each passing quarter.
Evaluating Your Path Forward
So what are your actual options? There are four primary paths, each with distinct financial and operational trade-offs.
First, you can purchase Hardware Service Extension. This keeps your current infrastructure running but with reduced support, no security updates, and higher costs. It’s the path of least immediate disruption, but it doesn’t solve any of the underlying challenges. You’re still accumulating technical debt, still operating aging equipment, and still facing the same decision a year or two from now, only with fewer options and higher costs.
Second, you can upgrade to Power10 or Power11. This gives you current-generation hardware with full vendor support, improved performance, and lower maintenance costs on newer equipment. You get the tax benefits of a capital expense and you reset your lifecycle clock. Often, newer systems with better performance-per-core ratios mean you need less hardware than you think, which changes the financial equation significantly.
Third, you can migrate to cloud infrastructure. This fundamentally changes the equation from buying everything to buying what you need to own and renting the rest through a consumption services model. Many organizations start by moving their disaster recovery environment to cloud. This lets them gain experience with the financial model and operational differences while maintaining production on-premises. They can evaluate how cloud consumption aligns with their actual usage patterns before committing to a full migration. It’s a low-risk way to explore cloud without betting your production environment on an untested approach.
Fourth, you can take a hybrid approach. Keep certain workloads on-premises where it makes sense, move others to cloud where flexibility and scalability matter more. This gives you the most flexibility but requires more sophisticated thinking about which workloads belong where and why.
The questions emerging most frequently center on capacity, disruption, and efficiency. How much capacity do we really need? How will we handle disruption if our primary environment has issues? How do we consume software most efficiently in the cloud versus on-premises? These questions reveal a shift in thinking, from “what hardware should we buy?” to “what infrastructure model serves our business best?”
Making the Decision That Serves Your Business
Organizations that handle infrastructure transitions well share a common trait: they stay on offense. They’re continuously evaluating forward-thinking technology and services rather than defending old equipment decisions. They recognize that clinging to aging infrastructure isn’t prudent financial management, it’s technical debt accumulation with a friendly face.
Consider the skills gap and talent retention challenge. Many organizations are better served by having infrastructure hosted by specialists who stay current with the technology, rather than expecting in-house teams to maintain expertise on aging systems while simultaneously supporting the actual business. This is particularly true for companies where IT infrastructure isn’t a core competency. If you’re a clothing company or an aerospace manufacturer, does it make sense to compete for Power Systems talent with companies whose entire business model depends on that expertise?
Services companies can retain specialized talent more effectively because they split that expertise across multiple clients’ needs. This unburdens your organization and optimizes people costs. You own the talent that directly supports your actual business, and you leverage external expertise for infrastructure that needs to be reliable but isn’t your competitive advantage.
The “lump under the carpet” metaphor resonates because it’s true. When you ignore infrastructure decisions, that lump doesn’t disappear. It gets bigger. Healthy organizations don’t wait for crises to drive infrastructure planning. They use natural decision points like EOSS announcements to evaluate what’s next, budget appropriately, and make choices that align technology investments with business objectives.
Your Next Move
If you’re paying for Hardware Service Extension instead of upgrading, you should be actively evaluating and budgeting for what comes next for the applications running on that infrastructure. Sometimes that means a holistic application change, but more often it means having clear internal communication about potential vulnerabilities and a realistic timeline for addressing them.
The key evaluation question is straightforward: How much do I use this application or workload, and am I paying costs using the best model? Usage patterns matter. Financial models matter. The relationship between your infrastructure consumption and your business value creation matters.
Organizations with limited budgets will understandably do the bare minimum to keep systems running. We’re not here to shame that reality. But if you have the ability to plan, invest, and leverage IT infrastructure to benefit your business, either broadly or for specific lines of business, the right partner can help you think through those decisions strategically.
The IBM Power9 EOSS announcement is a decision point. What you decide, and when you decide it, will shape your infrastructure costs, operational flexibility, and competitive positioning for the next several years. The question is whether you’ll approach this decision reactively, when you’re forced to by circumstances, or proactively, when you have the most options and the best negotiating position.
At CloudSAFE, we work with organizations navigating exactly these kinds of infrastructure transitions. As both a Power Systems reseller and cloud hosting provider, we can help you evaluate all your options objectively, whether that means right-sizing new hardware, migrating to cloud infrastructure, or building a hybrid model that serves your specific needs. We’re positioned to have the complete financial conversation about your infrastructure because we’re not limited to a single solution.
Ready to evaluate your options? Schedule a consultation with CloudSAFE to discuss your specific infrastructure situation and explore the path forward that makes sense for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What’s the difference between End of Standard Service (EOSS) and End of Life (EOL)?
A: EOSS means IBM stops providing preventive maintenance, firmware updates, and security patches under standard support, but Hardware Service Extension packages remain available for limited support. EOL means the product is completely unsupported with no service options available.
Q: If I purchase Hardware Service Extension, what support will I actually receive?
A: Hardware Service Extension provides remote support only, with on-site visits at IBM’s discretion, but includes no new patches, no security fixes, and no firmware updates. It’s designed to keep systems running, not to keep them current or secure.
Q: How do I know if cloud migration makes sense for my Power9 workloads?
A: Start by evaluating your actual capacity usage versus what you own, how often requirements fluctuate, and your team’s ability to maintain specialized infrastructure skills. Many organizations begin by moving disaster recovery to cloud to test the financial model before committing production workloads.
Q: What’s the typical timeline for evaluating and executing an infrastructure transition?
A: Most organizations need 3-6 months for thorough evaluation including workload assessment, financial modeling, and vendor discussions, plus 6-12 months for execution depending on complexity. Starting evaluation now for a January 2026 EOSS date puts you in a strong planning position.
Q: How can CloudSAFE help with this decision beyond just selling hardware or cloud services?
A: As both a reseller and cloud hosting provider, CloudSAFE offers unbiased financial analysis across all infrastructure models, drawing on experience with hundreds of client transitions. We help you evaluate ownership versus consumption models, assess true total cost of ownership, and plan for sustainable technology lifecycles aligned to your business needs.
