IBM Invests $1B to Deliver Unique Platform-as-a-Service Capabilities to Connect Enterprise Data and Applications to the Cloud

SOURCE: IBM

ARMONK, N.Y. and LAS VEGAS – 24 Feb. 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a unique new development environment and capabilities-as-a-service to help clients and developers speed the adoption of “hybrid” clouds, which have the potential to usher in a new era of innovation across the enterprise. As part of its initiative, IBM has invested more than $1 billion for software cloud development and is launching new capabilities running on SoftLayer.

With today’s news, IBM is addressing three fundamental issues to help speed the adoption of hybrid clouds.

1)    Enabling enterprise developers for the cloud: According to Evans Data, there are more than 18 million software developers worldwide yet less than 25 percent are developing for the cloud today [1]. As the industry moves to the cloud era, millions of developers are looking to access tools and services that will enable them to leverage this fast-emerging opportunity.

2)    Integrating across enterprise environments: Enterprises are looking to innovate and drive significant value in a new era of hybrid clouds, which link systems of engagement — built on mobile and social technologies and where consumers are engaging with organizations — with systems of record where data and transactions are processed.

3)    An open ecosystem and platform for development that accelerates innovation and fosters growth: Developers are looking for a dynamic application development environment to support the cloud era. A new development platform should be open and flexible and make it easier for corporate developers and independent companies alike to create applications and connect them to existing computing systems.

In response to these market dynamics, today IBM is announcing three new sets of cloud capabilities:

1)       IBM is opening its extensive enterprise software portfolio to the cloud and launching an open beta codenamed BlueMix™, a new platform-as-service (PaaS) that combines the strength of IBM software, third-party and open technologies. BlueMix provides DevOps in the cloud — an open, integrated development experience that scales. DevOps services help developers, independent firms and enterprise teams get started to build enterprise applications more quickly and effectively. DevOps services enable developers to focus on continuously delivering new functions by learning from their users. Today, IBM also announced a definitive agreement to acquire Boston, MA-based Cloudant, Inc., a privately held database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider that enables developers to easily and quickly create next generation mobile and web apps.  Cloudant will extend IBM’s Big Data and Analytics, Cloud Computing and Mobile offerings and become an essential component of BlueMix.

2)       IBM is bringing its middleware portfolio, such as WebSphere, to SoftLayer through pre-defined software “patterns” to easily extend existing applications to the cloud. With more than 200 application and middleware patterns available from IBM and IBM Business Partners, the IBM Software Patterns are differentiated in that they enable application portability across a hybrid cloud environment, providing the flexibility to deploy applications and middleware on-premise or off-premise, simplifying hybrid IT management.

3)       IBM continues to invest in and expand the services running on SoftLayer, including DevOps to provide essential capabilities to plan, develop, test, deploy and monitor applications, and systems management as a service, extending its industry leading solutions to the Cloud. And IBM today announced that it is integrating its Power Systems into its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure to deliver a level and breadth of infrastructure services beyond what has traditionally been available over the cloud.

“IBM is ushering in a bold new era of innovation by partnering with developers in an open environment to accelerate the emerging world of hybrid cloud computing,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM Senior Vice President, Software and Cloud Solutions. “We are combining the strength of our developer ecosystem with the depth of subject matter expertise in domains such as mobile, Big Data and DevOps, to build a scalable model that easily spans from a single developer to global teams. Today’s announcement is another significant move in extending true cloud integration — not just to existing data and transaction services but to a new class of emerging applications.”

About IBM Cloud Computing

IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with 40,000 industry experts around cloud engagements. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide.  Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 16 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more the 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM’s public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.  Join the conversation #ibmcloud. To learn more about today’s news please read Smarter Planet blog.

[1] Source: Evans Data Developer Population and Demographics Study, 2013.