IBM unveils new smart cloud services

IBM yesterday unveiled the industry’s most advanced cloud services and software designed from the ground up for enterprise clients.  New IBM SmartCloud services and capabilities introduce unprecedented choice, security and portability as businesses shift critical activities to the cloud and use it as a platform for business.  

IBM plans to support about 200 million users by the end of 2012 as clients shift core applications and processes to the IBM SmartCloud. Specifically, IBM is launching:

nIBMSmartCloud Application Services – A new platform-as-a-service that will give enterprises the cost and time savings of a cloud environment for a wide range of enterprise applications while maintaining a high level of control and security over deployment and access.

n    IBM SmartCloud Foun-dation – A new portfolio of breakthrough cloud software and hardware that allow enterprises to quickly deploy and control clouds within their own firewalls.

nIBM SmartCloud Ecosystem – New services for IBM partners and independent software vendors (ISVs) to help thousands of small and medium business clients adopt cloud models and manage millions of cloud based transactions by assisting their customers in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into the IBM SmartCloud.  

According to a new IBM survey of more than 500 business and IT leaders, only 33 percent have deployed more than a cloud pilot today but that number is expected to more than double in the next three years.  By 2015, 40 percent of the respondents say cloud will bring “substantial change” and 30 percent say cloud will drive the invention of business models and revenue streams.   

The study clearly indicates that enterprises see the value of cloud but face a unique set of challenges around security, reliability, standards and control in truly extending the use of cloud beyond IT and the virtualisation of data centres.

“IBM is committed to help our clients maximise the benefits through the cloud model by enabling them to embrace our broad portfolio of services and technology. Our clients in Sri Lanka will be able to take advantage of our SmartCloud solutions through IBM Business Partners and leverage their existing IT investments for newer avenues of innovation and productivity,” said Chrishan Fernando, Country General Manager, IBM Sri Lanka. “By adopting IBM’s SmartCloud, our clients are able to scale up their businesses with improved reliability and security,” he added.

IBM is debuting a new version of its public cloud for the enterprise, the IBM SmartCloud, with new services including the first platform as a service (PaaS), specifically designed to meet the needs of enterprise application development, deployment and management on the cloud.

Through this new enterprise PaaS, clients can achieve the benefits of cloud based economics for the deployment of both traditional and new applications, while at the same time maintaining the security, portability and governance critical to maintaining control in the Cloud.

Available in beta in the fourth quarter, IBM SmartCloud Application Services will offer enterprise–grade security, open Java and cross-platform support with no vendor lock-in, and a comprehensive set of application infrastructure and managed services to enable development and deployment of applications to the cloud.  

The Application Services will run on IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+  - the industry’s first enterprise class infrastructure-as-a-platform - specifically designed to run enterprise workloads, at committed business centric service level agreements

IBM SmartCloud Application Services hide the complexity of managing the infrastructure underneath the platform services and simplify the installation, setup, configuration and management of applications, middleware and application tools. This allows enterprises to focus on the business requirements of application itself.

Key capabilities will cover five categories:

nApplication Lifecycle – Provide development organisations with access to rapidly activated and team-based development environments and capabilities

nApplication Resources – Leverage shared services to reduce the cost and simplify the development, delivery and ongoing administration of cloud applications

nApplication Environments – Accelerate and optimise the deployment and management of your applications with pre-defined environments based on common application patterns

nApplication Management – Support effective deployment and management of third party applications with optimised deployment and management capabilities tuned to the specific application

nIntegration – Integrate your cloud-delivered applications with other applications or resources on-premises or in the cloud

Also, a key enhancement to the SmartCloud includes new services for automating the most common labour intensive tasks associated with managing SAP environments in the cloud. The SmartCloud for SAP Applications taps IBM’s experience in managing over 1.5 million users of SAP to significantly reduce the cost and labour associated with SAP cloning, refreshes and patching.