IBM made a major announcement on June 16th about Cloud Computing. In introducing my own Cloud Computing theme I noted that there was as yet no accepted logical definition. At one level IBM appears to agree, since it says ‘some use the word “Cloud” to describe new consumption and delivery models’ (my italics) indicating that others think it’s something else perhaps. On another level it has formalised what it means to IBM and its clients. It has come up with an integrated raft of announcements consolidating $10b investments on acquisitions and R & D in this area and multiple smaller announcements over the last couple of years. I think it’s a good idea to look at how its latest moves help define as a Cloud Computing supplier 
I’m sure I’m not the only one to find IBM’s announcement a bit confusing. It came complete with messages about the difficulty of managing the mass expansion of digital content in data centres, the need to automate IT in an analogous way to the industrialisation of banks (ATMs v queuing) and car manufacturing (robots and production lines). Perhaps it believes its customers are not yet fully familiar with the concepts of Cloud Computing. IBM announced 9 specific offerings (and 4 future ones) under three general titles in 2 categories. In particular:
- Smart Business Services (Cloud services)
1. .. on the IBM Cloud, including Development/Test and Desktop services now – Lotus Live, Information Protection Services and Computing on Demand, alongside business services later 2. Smart Business Cloud – cloud services built and/or run by IBM and deployed in an organisation’s own private Cloud. Detailed offerings include Analytics today; Test Cloud, Desktop Cloud, Scale Out File Services and business services later
- Smart Business Systems (purpose-built infrastructure)
3. Service Delivery Systems (system components ‘pre-integrated’ by IBM) which include Cloudburst in the Test/Development area and Smart Business for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), which are backed by the IBM Cloud. Cloudburst in the infrastructure area will be coming later. I’ve tried to capture the specific offerings in Figure 1. It cites Nedbank (South Africa) as a reference customer for Cloud which claims it shortens provisioning time, reduces operational costs and increases agility. It also names Smochen (China) as a Cloudburst user and one of the first organisations to receive services from IBM’s Cloud Computing Laboratory in Hong Kong.
IBM’s Deep Cloud Computing Resources
IBM initially announced its Cloud Services Initiative in October 2008. Since then the subject has become a regular theme in its press announcements and marketing activities. For instance: At the University and School level – it now claims to be working with 27 separate Universities. These include North Carolina State University, Ontario Universities, Kogakuin University (Japan), the National Science Foundation (USA) with Google. Pike County Schools in East Kentucky (USA) are a reference customer in its latest announcement, deploying virtual desktop to achieve dramatic savings in end-user support costs and deploy new courseware instantly. In collaboration with other ICT vendors – in addition to working with Google (see above) it has signed a deal with Amazon Web Services to deliver software via Cloud Computing and has demonstrated real-time application mobility through the collaboration between IBM Research and SAP. In its own Products and Services – before this week IBM had already announced Cloud Computing ‘consulting and implementation services’, a ‘Cloud social networking and collaboration service’, a ‘Cloud service for Web conferencing’, a portfolio of integrated Cloud services from its Lotus division and the Blue Cloud initiative to advance Enterprise-level Cloud Computing. Its InSite One product is designed to help tackle the explosion in medical image data brought about through Cloud Computing. I expect the list of offerings to be integrated into the over all portfolio – Figure 1 is going to get more columns and cells I’m sure.
Does IBM Fit In With My Cloud Computing Taxonomy?
IBM has a wide conversation with its customers and prospects – typically selling its offerings to CIOs and Data Centre managers, but also trying to influence Chief Finance Directors, senior business managers and often CEOs. It is very unlike the Web 2.0 Cloud Computing players such as salesforce.com, Google and Amazon, as it has a full range of traditional offerings (which incidentally could be adversely affected if it were immediately wildly successful in the Cloud area). IBM has a fantastic list of customers in the Finance sector – not just for its z Series mainframes and software. Perhaps because of their interests it has extended its Cloud developments to accommodate transaction processing and has a strong emphasis on developing private Clouds for its customers. On balance I believe that it is focusing its Cloud Computing messages more on the Data Centre manager than other players. While it certainly deals with software developers, these are perhaps more likely to be internal staff for whom Cloud Computing is an alternative (rather than a standard) development platform. IBM’s announcement demonstrates that the company is eager to make a return on its investments in things that relate to Cloud Computing by introducing specific services and systems. Many of these (such as virtual desktop deployment) it’s already been offering for some time. It’s a good time to pull the strands together under a single umbrella and make sure it has a single approach if possible in an undefined subject area. Rather than debate the definition of Cloud Computing it is keen to offer customers things they can buy at a difficult economic time. In some cases Cloud Computing is an extension of IBM’s Strategic Outsourcing – some organisations may prefer to take IBM hosted Cloud services in order to avoid large up-front spending on new systems. In others it begins to offer customers a way of paying (or indeed offering internally) applications on a subscription basis. While IBM’s expensive infrastructure stops it from going as far as some of its Web 2.0 competitors, I believe it is likely to lean more towards helping customers deploy their own private Clouds than – say – in hosting applications for Small and Medium Businesses. Please let me know if this helped you understand what IBM is doing, or if you are deploying (or struggling to understand) Cloud Computing.