IBM revealed a series of new products, services, clients and partnerships for the next phase of its "Blue Cloud" initiative. The cross-company portfolio of cloud computing offerings for business includes server capacity on demand, online data protection, and Lotus e-mail and collaboration software.
"Enterprise clients are keenly focused on investing in technologies that will make their IT operations more efficient," Dennis Quan, director of IBM autonomic computing, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "These companies have complex, heterogeneous environments and come to IBM for its broad spectrum of technologies and experience using both private and public clouds. There is no one size fits all-some clients will require specific services to come from on-site private clouds-which can include hardware ranging from x86 blades all the way up to System z-while some services may be more efficient to obtain from a public cloud."
IBM Global Services will offer data protection software "as a service" through the cloud, in addition to a new IBM cloud environment for businesses to safely test applications. New IBM software manages and secures cloud-computing environments. IBM showcases the first live demonstration of a global "overflow cloud"-IBM and Juniper Networks to install hybrid cloud capabilities across IBM's worldwide Cloud Labs for customer engagements
IBM also announced a service offering called "IBM Design and Implementation for Cloud Test Environments," which enables clients to build a cloud platform within their own IT environments to safely test new applications. This test cloud environment can save clients up to 20% on improved provisioning time, IBM says.
IBM also announced IBM Rational AppScan 7.8, which helps companies ensure that the Web services they publish into the cloud are secure, compliant and meet business policies. Working together with the new *IBM Rational AppScan OnDemand, *this technology ensures that Web services are monitored on a continuous basis, providing IT managers with ongoing security analysis for applications deployed in the cloud.
IBM also announced "The Service Management Center for Cloud Computing," which contains a set of offerings that together provide clients with a platform upon which to build and deliver cloud services. The cornerstone of the Service Management Center for Cloud Computing is Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.1 and the new Tivoli Service Automation Manager, intended to help clients automate both the deployment and management of computing clouds. The IBM Service Management Center for Cloud Computing will include at least nine solutions in 2009.
IBM also said it will launch a Tivoli Storage as a Service offering through its Business Continuity and Resiliency Services cloud. Beginning later in 2009, clients will be able to consume Tivoli data protection technologies via a cloud and pay for only what they use.
Further information is available at the IBM website.