IBM Announces Updates to SmartCloud Foundation

By David A. Kelly, Upside Research

IBM recently announced new offerings under its SmartCloud Foundation, many of them in response to some notable statistics around cloud computing adoption by enterprises.

According to a study published recently by IBM, the number of enterprises who use cloud computing to transform their existing business model will more than double in the next three years. The shift seems to be occurring away from viewing cloud as a means for gaining efficiencies and cost savings and toward using cloud to transform business models and drive new revenue streams. A recent IBM Institute for Business Value study found that 90 percent of enterprises expect to adopt or deploy cloud services of some sort by 2015. The impact of this adoption rate will be significant.

To help enterprises in their efforts to sustainability adopt cloud computing, IBM is releasing IBM SmartCloud Continuous Delivery. The new software is a suite of best practice patterns for enabling integrated lifecycle management of cloud services. It combines Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management solutions with IBM SmartCloud Provisioning, a solution that IBM released in the Fall of 2011. IBM is also tying its recent Green Hat acquisition to further reduce development lifecycle times by streamlining test cycles as applications are transitioned to cloud deployments.

IBM has also announced two three offerings to SmartCloud Foundation. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is designed to provide enterprises with the ability to maintain configuration integrity during both planned changes and unplanned incidents and problems across the IT environment. The solution is designed to ensure continuity of service, speed of response, and efficiency of management. IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices is designed to help enterprises better manage and secure the plethora of mobile devices attached to the network, including tablets and phones. It allows IT organizations to remotely set policies, monitor all devices  and identify potential data compromise. IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center rounds out the new offerings with a solution that improves flexibility and performance of cloud storage spaces at a lower cost with more automated controls.

As I  have discussed in previous blogs, IBM has designed this SmartCloud portfolio to help its enterprise customers quickly adopt private clouds and leverage the flexibility of the cloud infrastructure. It gives enterprises the opportunity to move beyond virtualization while still maintaining control of the security, access, and deployment of business-critical applications. The cloud continues to be an area of major focus for IBM, and the company has successfully built on its strong reputation as a secure, trusted solution and service provider to help its enterprise customers adopt cloud computing in a variety of ways. These new tools provide enterprise IT leaders with the added control and security they need to feel comfortable about the cloud. If IBM’s numbers are correct, there is no doubt that we are in the process of a paradigm shift in enterprise computing. IBM’s SmartCloud is among those offerings that will help ensure the security and integrity of this newest computing landscape.