IBM released Granite 4.1, a family of open foundation models available for enterprise deployment. The models come in multiple sizes with enterprise licensing and support structures. For operators evaluating internal deployment infrastructure, this expands vendor options beyond closed-API providers. IBM's established enterprise support relationships and on-premise deployment capabilities lower barriers for organizations with data residency or regulatory constraints. The release signals continued competition in the open-weights model space at production scale. Operationally, teams previously choosing between proprietary SaaS APIs and community models now have a third path: vendor-backed open models with commercial support. This changes vendor evaluation criteria—cost-per-inference, fine-tuning capability, and compliance certifications now matter more than API convenience. Organizations running private inference infrastructure can benchmark against Granite's performance metrics to validate build-versus-buy decisions. The availability of multiple model sizes within a family reduces the need to maintain separate evaluation pipelines for different scale requirements.