IBM Expands Its Cloud Computing Offerings – Highlights The Differences In Regional Adoption

IBM March 16th 2010 Cloud Computing Highlights

• Announced the availability in North America of its new ‘Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud’ service
• Opened a Cloud Computing resource centre on its developerWorks Web site
• Launched the Rational Software Delivery Service for private Cloud customers and announced its future availability through the IBM Cloud
• Used SOASTA and The Collaborative Software Initiative to demonstrate how development, test and deployment work for its customers
• Sees large Japanese enterprises adopting Cloud Computing early due to their small IT departments and traditional reliance on external services
• Is working in public/private partnerships in Japan and Vietnam to deploy Cloud Computing
• Has more of a demand from enterprises for Cloud Computing in Europe and the US

Yesterday IBM announced extensions to its expanding Cloud Computing portfolio. In analyst pre-briefing we heard from a number of speakers. In particular:

• Eric Clementi – VP, Strategy and GM, Enterprise Initiatives and head of Cloud Computing at IBM
• Pat Toole – IBM’s CIO
• Evan Bauer – CTO, The Collaborative Software Initiative, which is an organisation working with the Obama administration in the US to help improve public education
• Tom Lounibos – CEO, SOASTA, which is a Cloud performance testing company

While talking about new services to help large organisations build private Clouds, or resources to allow developments on IBM’s own facilities, it gave me an opportunity to ask Eric about regional adoption of Cloud Computing from an IBM perspective. I though it would be interesting to summarise the discussion and draw some conclusions about IBM’s Cloud Computing direction.

IBM’s New Services And Resources

The March 16th 2010 announcement covered two new services and new resources. In particular:

• The ‘general availability’ in North America of the – I think – clumsily named ‘IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud’ – basically a hosted development and test environment for its large customers (see Figure 1); the service can be deployed with a few mouse clicks; its use will reduce labour costs, increase capital utilisation, reduce provisioning cycle times, reduce risk and improve quality, according to the company; it is interesting that Redhat announced that IBM is using its Enterprise Virtualization as part of its solution
• Its Rational Software Delivery Services (SDS) for private Cloud and the pre-release of SDS on the IBM Cloud; IBM acquired Rational, a software development platform provider, in 2002 for around $1 billion and has kept its brand since the; not covered in Figure 1, it provides its Jazz platform through Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings; this latest announcement offers pre-assembled solutions for private Cloud deployments and previews the availability of Jazz as a service hosted by IBM
• The inclusion of Development within its Cloud Test services
• Its developerWorks online Cloud Computing resource centre; IBM claims to have 8 million users, with 4 million unique visitors per month; it has 30k items in its technical library and supports 8 different languages

IBM might do better to separate the services and resources for its customers to develop private Cloud Computing from the Software as a Service offerings, since customers for the former need to know precise technical details and those of the latter often want to escape from technology.

The Voice Of The Customer – IBM Cloud Computing In Action

Evan Bauer, Collaborative Software Initiative

The Collaborative Software Initiative is an organisation working in the US to improve public education. Evan’s company has been working with Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations (STCI) to launch the US Department of Education’s Open Innovation Portal. It developed and tested and is now hosting the solution on ‘the IBM Cloud’. Even indicated the advantages in the speed of the deployment, which went from beta testing in January to a production version in February. Since there were no good estimates for how many people would use the portal, the hosted solution has ‘scale as you go’ advantages. He is impressed with the fact that IBM ‘makes the servers yours’ and claims that the IBM Cloud has a better ‘definition of responsibility’ than the other managed hosting environments. His approval may bring IBM more business, as his is the first of a number of new community involved government portals to be developed.

Tom Lounibos, SOASTA

SOASTA is involved in helping organisations test the scalability of Web sites when put under significant strain (during the Superbowl, tax day, or Xmas shopping for instance). The massive expansion of mobile devices and social media often creates traffic problems, causing ‘high level latency’ and/or crashes. Losses are measured not only in millions of dollars, but also consumer confidence. In the past significant hardware and software costs made it almost impossible to test mobile applications and associated Web site performance. Tom’s company has been using IBM’s Cloud Test on demand service and leveraging Cloud Computing to simulate real world traffic levels. Provisioning a test takes only 6 to 7 minutes and SOASTA can call on hundreds (or even thousands) of servers. SOASTA indicated that it is adding 10 to 20 customers (which already include Zappos Shoes, Wallmart and a number of IBM’s own enterprise clients) per day and that IBM is adding capacity to make sure demand doesn’t outstrip demand. He concluded by saying that IBM’s presence is a welcome addition for SOASTA and Cloud Computing and that its international presence allowed it to simulate Web traffic from across the globe.

Japan, China, Europe And The USA – Differences In IBM Customer Adoption Of Cloud Computing

During the question and answer session I asked Eric about IBM’s experience of demand from different regions and countries for Cloud Computing. This is what he said:

• Japan – even very large enterprises have surprisingly small IT staff; they have more of a services model, with Systems Integration and systems being provided externally having a big roll out; they same is true for Cloud
• Rest of Asia – China is the dominant country and the most interest in Cloud is in public/private partnerships; IBM’s Cloud Computing offerings are helping regional governments there to help spur on private ISV development; similar things are happening in Vietnam
• Europe and the US – here it is really large enterprises that are driving Cloud Computing
• In other countries it is often Telco companies which IBM has as customers – not surprising as they are building service delivery platforms

He concluded that t was not the same pattern everywhere. I think IBM is far more international than any of the other Cloud Computing suppliers.

Some Conclusions – IBM Is Investing To Help The CIO Build And Adopt Cloud Computing

IBM is not addressing the needs of SMBs with its Cloud Computing offerings, nor is it using these solutions to ‘cross the park’ to sell to CFOs in an attempt to unseat its competitors. Rather it has invested significantly in facilities to help its large customers develop, test and sometimes run Cloud Computing applications. Although its partners in this telecom were both based in the US, it is working across the world to help CIOs come to terms with this developing paradigm. There are other plays it should consider – such as fine-tuning SaaS offerings such as LotusLive iNotes and Storage on the IBM Cloud for SMB customers. On a personal level it should also simplify its nomenclature. Clearer branding and less complicated names for its services and solutions will help with customer adoption.

Do you have experience of using IBM Cloud Computing offerings? How does it compare with other system vendors? Let me know by commenting on this article.