IBM CEO Virginia Rometty may have pulled out of the commodity server business last year, but she’s as committed as ever to competing on the higher end of the compute spectrum. The latest proof of that came this week in the form of beefy new machines that push the envelope on processing density.

The star of the launch is IBM’s homegrown POWER8 chip, a 12-core powerhouse that can handle up to 96 threads and comes with a massive 96 megabytes of fast L3 cache to match. No fewer than four of the processors are included in the new Power System E850, which packs four terabytes of memory to support multi-tenant cloud applications.

Providers that need more horsepower can turn to the Power System E880, which comes with 16 cores and targets mission-critical workloads such as databases that require a combination of high performance and reliability, according to IBM. Applications running on the servers can draw upon the new array introduced in conjuction for persistent storage.

The XIV Gen 3 is the latest iteration of the company’s top-end disk series, which has been enhanced with functionality ported from its Storwize virtual storage appliances to increase effective capacity between 50 and 80 percent. IBM claims that the feature contributes to a 42 percent reduction in total cost of ownership compared to rivaling 3PAR systems from HP, a significant advantage that is amplified severalfold at the scale in which the large organizations that the system targets operate.

Customers that want more flexibility with their storage are also receiving a bonus in the form of a new cloud extension for Spectrum, a recently introduced standalone implementation of the management stack powering the XIV series that can run on third party hardware. The service, dubbed Control Storage Insights, offers visibility into how capacity is split among different applications and users.

It’s joined by another new cloud-based storage appliance that offers low-cost archiving for infrequently accessed data that needs be kept around for extended periods in order to meet compliance requirements. That’s a particularly important requirement for the banks and other large, heavily-regulated organizations that typically buy IBM’s Power systems, but even that traditionally-minded segment is starting to change its purchasing patterns.

With this launch, IBM also joins the broader industry shift towards converged infrastructure with the PurePower System. The integrated appliance combines servers, storage and networking equipment in a single chassis that IBM says can be set up quickly and provides up to 12 times the hardware density of competing alternatives.

The PurePower System highlight a delicate balancing act between IBM’s efforts to address new trends while maintaining the investments of customers that have bought the traditional systems accounting for the bulk of its revenues, a challenge that the company shares with Dell, which made a similar product update a few days ago. Newer players such as VCE – which announced new hardware of its own last week – hope to use that dynamic to their advantage, but the number of new systems that IBM unloaded today demonstrate that CEO Rometty is hardly letting the competition use her company’s size against it.