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IBM Unveils New Smart Cloud Services to Give Enterprises Better Control Over the Cloud

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IBM has unveiled what it's calling 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, according to the company. 

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: 

  • IBM SmartCloud 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.
    •  
  • IBM SmartCloud Foundation – A new portfolio of breakthrough cloud software and hardware that allow enterprises to quickly deploy and control clouds within their own firewalls.
    •  
  • IBM 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 virtualization of data centers.  

“Enterprise clients are much more conservative because their revenue, reputation and supply chain are closely related to the performance and security of their infrastructure,” said Erich Clementi, senior vice president, IBM. “Our focus with SmartCloud will bring the benefits of this model in a way that supports enterprise level service, leverages existing investments and opens new doors to productivity and innovation."  

New IBM SmartCloud Services 

Today, 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: 

  • Application Lifecycle – Provide development organizations with access to rapidly activated and team-based development environments and capabilities
  • Application Resources – Leverage shared services to reduce the cost and simplify the development, delivery and ongoing administration of cloud applications
  • Application Environments – Accelerate and optimize the deployment and management of your applications with pre-defined environments based on common application patterns
  • Application Management – Support effective deployment and management of third party applications with optimized deployment and management capabilities tuned to the specific application
  • Integration – 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 labor 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 labor associated with SAP cloning, refreshes and patching.  

These new platform services provide dramatic improvements in cost and time savings:

 

Actions

From Traditional

To IBM SmartCloud

Development environment setup

Weeks

Hours

Administrative hours per database

6 per week

1 per week

Web application deployment

Weeks

Minutes

Application integration

Months

Days or hours

Provision SAP Test environment

Weeks

Minutes

Application administration

1 operator per 10 apps

1 operator per 100 apps

 

 IBM is also announcing the availability IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ in the U.S.,with full global deployment planned by end of 2012.  Announced earlier this year, SmartCloud Enterprise + delivers the cost saving and scalability of a public cloud environment plus the flexibility to “dial-in” the security, existing applications, reliability, management and support services more typical of a private environment.  IBM intends to make SCE+ available to qualified IBM Business Partners to resell in the first half of 2012. 

IBM is making available a Cloud Migration Service for hosting and application on demand clients in the U.S. to achieve the benefits of operating on IBM's SmartCloud while minimizing the risk of the transition to cloud delivery. IBM plans to support about 200 million users by the end of 2012 as clients shift core applications and processes to the IBM SmartCloud. 

For additional details about support and availability about new IBM SmartCloud services, read here: http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/paas.html 

IBM SmartCloud Foundation   

IBM is announcing the SmartCloud Foundation family of private cloud solutions to help companies quickly design and deploy private cloud environments with a new level of control over cloud service delivery and management. As organizations take the next step beyond virtualized data center and begin to expand their cloud environments, they are concerned with managing what has become known as “image sprawl." 

The SmartCloud Foundation portfolio contains these offerings: 

  • IBM SmartCloud Entry solution, delivered by IBM Starter Kit for Cloud, offers the building blocks to create private clouds on virtualized IBM System x and Power Systems hardware. The solution provides simplified initialization and administration for cloud environments on Power and x86 systems, standardization of virtual machines, and improved operations productivity with an easy-to-use, self-service interface. Organizations can also quickly and easily scale to more advanced cloud solutions as business demands and workloads increase.
  • IBM SmartCloud Provisioning software offers a powerful provisioning engine and image management system to dynamically create or provision virtual machines. The software can create hundreds of virtual machines in less than a minutes and scale to more than 4,000 virtual machines in less than an hour.
  • IBM SmartCloud Monitoring applies its industry-leading monitoring expertise to provide greater visibility into the performance of virtual and physical environments: storage, network and server resources.

IBM SmartCloud Ecosystem 

IBM is making a significant commitment to the business partner community to help them quickly ramp up and participate in the industry shift to cloud computing by making it easier for them to deliver enterprise-grade public and private cloud solutions to clients. 

IBM has hundreds of partners building applications to run on the IBM SmartCloud. For example, SugarCRM will provide their applications on the IBM SmartCloud. Managers will now have faster access to sales reports and data, as well as analytical tools to evaluate sales performance. 

"Customers are looking to simplify their IT environments with lower cost and more scalable infrastructure for growth, and Sugar on the IBM SmartCloud enables just this,” said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM. “We see the IBM SmartCloud providing clients the peace of mind that their data is secure while also allowing access to that data anytime, anywhere.  In addition, now having the access to IBM's full library of technologies available on SmartCloud such as analytics and collaboration will help us deliver even more advanced CRM solutions to our clients." 

Also, IBM is unveiling new storage-as-a-service offerings from Nirvanix as part of the IBM SmartCloud portfolio available to customers worldwide. With the integration of Nirvanix cloud storage technology, IBM’s SmartCloud storage services will provide customers with a solution capable of supporting millions of users, billions of objects and exabytes of data to complement IBM’s existing secure, virtual server environments in the cloud. 

Other IBM cloud services for the enterprise  

IBM began its cloud initiative nearly five years ago establishing “Blue Cloud” labs around the world and working wit thousands of innovative businesses, governments and universities. Cloud is now a core growth area for IBM, expected to drive $7 billion in revenue by 2015 in hardware, software and services.

In September, IBM announced new cloud offerings that will help organizations respond automatically to shifting consumer and business market trends with new solutions for Commerce-as-a-Service and Social Media Marketing with technologies from key acquisitions such as Unica, Coremetrics and Sterling Commerce combined with IBM research and development. 

Known as Smarter Commerce on the Cloud, IBM is already working with hundreds of leading companies such as Autotrader, Danone, DBS Bank, Guidewell, McKesson, PETCO, Sears, Staples, Target Corp., True Value, VISA, Whirlpool, Winn-Dixie an many others to transform their marketing, sales, service and supply chain functions. 

Financing provided by IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing arm of IBM, helps credit-qualified clients make the transition to cloud computing with zero percent financing for servers, storage and software or deferred payments up to six months. Financing helps clients accelerates their cloud project’s cash flow break-even point by spreading upfront costs over time, enabling them to utilizing cash reserves for other strategic investments. 

IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. IBM is unique in bringing together key cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions, and a network of global delivery centers. For more information about IBM cloud solutions, visit www.ibm.com/smartcloud. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ibmcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com.

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.

For more information, visit: www.ibm.com.

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