IBM is in the midst of a major transformation in its systems business as it moves away from x86. Part of that transformation involves refocusing the company's Linux strategy to be centered on IBM's Power Systems, an effort that Doug Balog, general manager of IBM Power Systems, is helping to lead.

In a video interview with eWEEK, Balog explains where he sees the largest growth opportunity for Power and what IBM is doing to position itself competitively against Intel. Balog said the Power is still aiming to grab share from Intel Itanium-based and Oracle Sparc-based systems, but that's not where the largest opportunity currently exists.

"The real focus is the roughly $20 billion Linux server market, which is where we're focused for growth, and we're a small part of that today on Power," Balog said. "So I view it as $20 billion of upside for me to go after and all of that is competitive against x86."

Balog said that the conversation IBM is having with organizations is about finding the data workloads that today are having challenges with ingesting information or business insights with analytics. IBM Power excels in the area of data analytics and enterprise Java applications, Balog said.

IBM is also very focused on making sure that Power is the best place to run Linux.

"We're right there putting code into the upstream to make sure it's optimized on the Power platform," Balog said.

Watch the full video interview with Doug Balog below:

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.