Provider Profile
Thrive for IBM Power: Independent Profile
Thrive is a roughly $400 million mid-market managed services and security provider whose entire IBM i capability arrived in one 2023 acquisition. Its IBM Power offering is backup, archiving, and disaster recovery, not production hosting. Here's what the company publishes, and what to confirm yourself.
Independent profile, not sponsored by, affiliated with, or endorsed by this provider.
What is Thrive?
Thrive is a global managed IT, cloud, and cybersecurity provider whose IBM Power offering is a cloud-based backup, archiving, and disaster recovery service for IBM i, with full system recovery covering IBM i (OS/400) and AIX. Software installs directly onto the IBM i, holds a local copy for fast restores, and replicates remote copies to Thrive's data centers, where temporary server replicas can be provisioned while you recover. It is not production hosting, and Thrive is not an IBM Power specialist: the capability came from its April 2023 acquisition of Toronto-based Storagepipe, and IBM does not appear on Thrive's published partner list. The right way to think about Thrive is as a broad managed services and security partner that can also protect your IBM i, rather than as an IBM Power provider.
At a Glance
Thrive Specifications
Everything below is drawn from what Thrive publishes. Items marked vendor-stated are the provider's claims, not independently verified figures: treat them as questions to raise, not as confirmed specifications.
- IBM i
- AIX
| Provider type | Mid-market managed services and security provider (MSP/MSSP) with an IBM i backup, archiving, and DR service. Not a Power hosting specialist |
|---|---|
| Where the IBM i capability came from | Its April 2023 acquisition of Storagepipe Solutions of Toronto, founded 2001, which had backed up IBM i since inception. Thrive's stated rationale for the deal was Canadian market expansion, not IBM i |
| Company scale | Roughly $400 million revenue in 2025 with a stated $1 billion target by 2029, around 30 offices across seven countries, and 26 to 27 acquisitions since 2016 |
| Ownership | Private equity. Berkshire Partners and Court Square Capital Partners since January 2025, when M/C Partners fully exited. Third control change in nine years. CEO Bill McLaughlin since February 2025 |
| Service scope (vendor-stated) | A cloud-based managed backup, archiving, and disaster recovery solution described as designed specifically for the IBM i. Production LPAR hosting is not offered on this page |
| Full system recovery (vendor-stated) | Covers both IBM i (OS/400) and IBM AIX operating systems |
| Delivery model (vendor-stated) | Software installs directly onto the IBM i, providing local backup for fast recovery plus remote copies and images, with temporary server replicas provisioned in a Thrive data center until you recover |
| IBM i releases and hardware | Not published. No supported IBM i release matrix, no AIX version list, no POWER generation, and no mention of Linux on Power anywhere on the site |
| Named backup tooling | None published for IBM i. Its named alliance partners are x86 and Microsoft oriented (Veeam, Zerto, Asigra, Pure Storage). IBM is not on the partner list |
| IBM i-native HA technology | None named. No MIMIX, Precisely Assure, Maxava, PowerHA, or remote journaling appears anywhere. Treat this as a restore-from-backup service, not an HA product |
| Data centers (vendor-stated) | 15 facilities listed across the US, Canada, UK, and Asia. Its own page describes purpose-built Tier I and Tier II US facilities, a lower resilience tier than the Tier III most colocation providers market, and says it partners with data centers rather than owning them. The UK filing describes a Tier 3+ site |
| Compliance (vendor-stated) | SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 for North America, scoped to the Security and Confidentiality criteria only. Availability is not in scope, which is worth noting for a backup and DR vendor. ISO 27001:2022, ISO 9001:2015, and Cyber Essentials Plus are held by the UK entity |
| Published SLAs | Only in its UK public-sector filings: 15 minute P1 confirmation, 30 minute engineer response, 2 hour resolution target, and a 100 percent uptime guarantee backed by service credits. No equivalent US or IBM i-specific SLA is published |
| Published pricing | Only in UK public-sector filings, and those cover x86 only: backup at 139 pounds per unit per month, DR at 230 pounds. The UK DR listing explicitly states VMware and Hyper-V hypervisors only, so IBM i DR appears to be a North America service |
Vendor pages last checked August 2026. Providers change offerings without notice: confirm current details directly.
Visit the provider's IBM Power page →Where It Is Strong
What Thrive Does Well
Points that genuinely differentiate this provider, based on what it publishes and how it is positioned in the IBM Power market.
One contract for a mixed estate
This is the real argument for Thrive. If IBM i is one or two partitions inside a Microsoft, VMware, and SaaS estate, Thrive covers all of it with one service desk, one security operations center, and one bill. A Power specialist cannot do that.
Security and compliance depth well beyond a hosting specialist
A 24x7x365 security operations center with managed detection and response, plus managed governance and compliance covering CMMC, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 readiness after its 2025 Abacode acquisition. Most IBM Power hosts do not field anything comparable.
A genuine path off tape
The software installs onto the IBM i itself rather than treating it as a generic server behind an agent, holds a local copy for fast restores, and replicates offsite. For shops still shipping tapes, that replaces the whole rotation with no capital outlay.
Canadian data residency
Markham and Montreal facilities came with Storagepipe, which is a real option for Canadian IBM i shops that many US-only providers cannot match.
Sits alongside your existing host
Because this is data protection rather than hosting, it can protect on-premises Power hardware or a workload already running with another provider.
Fit Check
Is Thrive a Good Fit?
Best fit
Good fit signals
Mid-market organizations whose IBM i is a minority of a broader Windows and VMware estate, who want backup, DR, security monitoring, and compliance work from one provider, and whose recovery requirement is measured in hours rather than minutes.
Use caution
Proceed with caution if
IBM Power is a small legacy line inside a large, acquisitive security and managed services business, and the public evidence points to it being maintained rather than invested in. The capability came from a single 2023 acquisition, Storagepipe's own dedicated IBM i pages have been folded into one thin Thrive page, IBM does not appear among roughly two dozen named alliance partners, and there is no supported release matrix, no POWER generation, no named backup engine, no retention or immutability claim, and no IBM i case study anywhere on the site. Its SOC 2 attestation covers Security and Confidentiality but not Availability, which is an odd gap for a DR vendor. None of this makes Thrive a bad provider. It does mean you should buy it as an MSP that protects IBM i, not as an IBM Power specialist.
Key decision
Decision point
Decide whether your IBM i is the center of your estate or a corner of it. If it is the center, a Power specialist will give you deeper engineering and tighter recovery objectives. If it is a corner, Thrive's single-contract coverage of everything else may be worth more than IBM i depth.
Due Diligence
What to Verify Before You Sign
Take these to the provider in writing. Anything that only exists in a slide deck is not a commitment.
That this is not production hosting
The IBM Power page describes backup, archiving, and disaster recovery, and DR compute is explicitly temporary replicas until you recover. If you also need managed IBM i operations, confirm explicitly whether Thrive offers that or whether you need a second provider.
Which IBM i releases are supported
No release matrix is published at all. Ask which of 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, and 7.6 are supported today, and what happens to your contract when IBM ends support for the release you run.
What software actually performs the backup
No product is named for IBM i. Storagepipe's original IBM-platform service was built on IBM Tivoli Storage Manager technology. Ask what the engine is today, whether BRMS is integrated or bypassed, and get the datasheet.
Immutability, air gap, and retention
No object lock, WORM, air gap, or retention figure is published for IBM i. If your insurer or regulator requires immutable or offline copies, get the mechanism described in writing before you retire tape.
IBM i recovery objectives specifically
The only published RPO and RTO figures, seconds and minutes, appear in a UK filing that covers VMware and Hyper-V only. They do not apply to IBM i. Get modeled numbers for your data volume written into the contract.
Whether the SOC 2 report covers Availability
Thrive's published scope is Security and Confidentiality. For a backup and DR service, ask why Availability is out of scope and request the full report to read the criteria table yourself.
Which team supports IBM i, and how many
No IBM i engineer headcount is published. Ask how many named IBM i engineers Thrive employs, where they sit, how many were with Storagepipe before April 2023, and whether IBM i escalations follow the standard managed services path.
Data center tier and location of the Power hardware
Its own US page claims Tier I and Tier II facilities. Ask which specific facility holds the Power hardware used for your recovery, what tier it is, and whether Thrive owns it or rents space in it.
Thrive FAQ
Does Thrive host IBM i production workloads?
No, not as published. Its IBM Power page describes backup, archiving, and disaster recovery, and the only compute mentioned is temporary replicas provisioned until you recover. A single bullet elsewhere on the site mentions managed IBM iSeries private cloud platforms with no supporting page or specification. If you need day-to-day managed IBM i operations, confirm it separately and do not assume it is included.
Where did Thrive's IBM i capability come from?
Its acquisition of Storagepipe Solutions of Toronto, announced in April 2023. Storagepipe was founded in 2001 and had backed up IBM i systems since then. Thrive's own announcement framed the deal as Canadian market expansion and a financial services hub play, and did not mention IBM i in the strategic rationale.
Is Thrive an IBM Business Partner?
IBM does not appear among the roughly two dozen alliance partners Thrive lists publicly, which are led by Microsoft, Fortinet, Veeam, Zerto, and similar. Storagepipe described itself as an IBM Business Partner before the acquisition. Ask Thrive directly whether it holds current IBM partner status and at what tier.
Does the service cover AIX as well as IBM i?
Full system recovery is stated to cover both IBM i (OS/400) and AIX. The backup and archiving solution itself is described as designed specifically for the IBM i, and no AIX version list is published, so confirm exactly what AIX coverage includes.
Can Thrive give me near-zero downtime on IBM i?
Unlikely, on the published evidence. No IBM i-native high availability technology is named anywhere: no MIMIX, Precisely Assure, Maxava, PowerHA, or remote journaling. Storagepipe's own chief executive told IT Jungle that fewer than 10 percent of its customers required high availability and that many could tolerate one to two days of downtime. This product line was built for restore-from-backup recovery windows. If you need minutes, look at a specialist.
How does Thrive compare with Recovery Point for IBM Power DR?
Thrive's model is an on-platform agent and managed backup service aimed at replacing tape, delivered by a broad MSP. Recovery Point is a resiliency specialist built around storage-array replication such as IBM Global Mirror and SRDF. The Thrive approach is generally simpler and cheaper to adopt; array replication typically targets much tighter recovery objectives. Match the choice to the recovery time your business actually requires.
Sources
- Thrive: IBM Power Systems disaster recovery
- Thrive: compliance and regulatory services (SOC 2 scope)
- Thrive: data centers
- Thrive: alliance partners
- Thrive: acquisition of Storagepipe (April 2023)
- IT Jungle: IBM i backup provider Storagepipe snapped up by Thrive (June 2023)
- UK Digital Marketplace: Thrive managed DRaaS listing (scope, SLAs, pricing)
- Supported IBM i releases, backup engine, immutability, and recovery objectives. Request directly from Thrive
Independent Advisory Notice
Power Systems Advisors is an independent advisory resource and is not IBM. IBM, IBM Power, IBM i, AIX, PowerVM, Power Virtual Server, and other marks belong to their respective owners. Product availability, compatibility, pricing, and support should be verified with IBM or the relevant provider. Recommendations depend on the customer's specific environment.
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