The company will continue to offer commodity servers with x86 processors, but it will also increasingly offer server configurations and appliances optimized for specific applications such as medicine, cloud computing and transaction processing.

"One size really doesn't fit all," Menon said. "It isn't really the case that x86 is the right answer for everything, or Power is the right answer for everything."

IBM is putting more energy in building computers that mix CPUs with specialized accelerators to diversify its servers and target specific workloads, an IBM executive said this week.

Servers based on generic CPU designs may be good for certain applications, but IBM wants to add homegrown co-processors and specialized circuits to accelerate certain tasks, said Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, during an interview.