IBM Power Financial Intelligence

The Power Value Index is this site's own independently developed 0-100 composite score ranking IBM Power8 through Power11 on six weighted inputs: performance (25%), remaining useful life (20%), capacity (15%), software economics (15%), market price (15%), and value retention (10%). It is not an IBM-published metric. See the Power Value Index page for the full methodology and every generation's score.

By the Power Value Index, Power10 currently scores highest on value (76 of 100) even though Power11 scores highest overall (86) on raw capability. Power10 was just withdrawn from new-unit marketing (31 July 2026), so its secondary market is forming now, its price is softening, and it still carries several years of expected support runway -- a combination that outscores Power11's zero-discount new-build pricing on the value measure specifically.

It depends on your time horizon. A used Power9 scores well on acquisition cost and current performance, but its standard IBM support already ended for scale-out models (31 January 2026), so you are buying a short, defined runway at a discount. A new Power11 costs more up front but starts a full support lifecycle with no announced end date. For a workload you plan to keep 5+ years, Power11 (or Power10) usually wins; for a 1-3 year bridge or a small, non-critical partition, a used Power9 can be the more rational buy.

IBM i licensing is set by software tier (P05 through P50), independent of which Power generation you run it on. As of the most recent reporting, P05 runs about $2,356/core/year on subscription or $3,315/core as a one-time perpetual purchase; P20 runs roughly $14,500-$16,000/core/year on subscription. See IBM i Tier Economics for the full tier table and how the hardware generation you choose changes how many cores you actually need to license.

Power8's standard IBM maintenance ended across the full line by October 2024, so any Power8 still in production today is on extended or third-party support, which typically escalates faster than standard-support pricing and carries growing parts-availability risk. Combined with Power8's bottom-ranked Power Value Index score (40 of 100, driven mainly by near-zero remaining useful life), most Power8 workloads are past the rational keep-vs-replace breakeven point already. See Upgrade Economics for the decision framework.

No. The Power Value Index is an independently developed analytical framework built by this site, not an IBM-published or IBM-endorsed metric. Every input is sourced where a public figure exists (IBM benchmark data, IBM end-of-service announcements, third-party pricing reporting); inputs without a citable public source are explicitly labeled as a Krisada Estimate on the Power Value Index page.