TO MANY, IBM’s Cloud offering might seem something of a radical departure from its ‘traditional’ markets of selling mainframes, servers and storage. But, as Doug Clark, points out, it’s more of the next step in a logical evolution. “IBM is a massive organisation and, as such, we’ve always had interests in many different areas. Yes, there’s the traditional hardware, systems and services business, but we’ve also been involved in ‘heavy-lifting’ outsourcing and have a hugely successful consulting operation as well. We’re known for helping customers achieve strategic transformation of their IT environments, and we have widespread experience of running big IT systems, migrations, security, VDI and professional services and, something which many people forget, we also have a pedigree in software.”
He continues: “In recent years, thanks in part to acquisitions, we’ve developed software-as-a-service offerings and, over time, a full Cloud stack with a rich portfolio of our own products and, importantly, thanks to our use of open standards, allowing significant third party involvement as well. So we have, if you like, a Cloud infrastructure and platform level into which third parties can simply plug in their own applications.”
In simple terms, IBM is building a technology portfolio that allows it to offer what Clark calls the ‘Dynamic Hybrid Cloud’. “The Cloud is disrupting the Channel and enterprise customers alike,” he explains, “and IBM has Cloud offerings for the distributors, resellers and MSPs to offer their customers as well as private, enterprise Clouds for clients. IBM can host a Cloud and/or keep the Cloud on the customer’s own premises. Our overall objective is to ensure that all of our customers can maximise the potential of what they move into a Cloud environment.”
Clark believes that the acquisition of SoftLayer is a vital ingredient of the IBM Cloud portfolio. “By acquiring SoftLayer, we’re showing that IBM is anything but a one trick pony – it allows us to offer customers a range of Cloud infrastructure formats, from which they can choose the most relevant to meet their workload.”
Clark continues: “In our vision of the Dynamic Hybrid Cloud, some applications will be hosted in the Public Cloud, others not, and IBM can provide whatever combination of environments is required – multi-tenant, virtual, bare metal, mainframe and much, much more.”
Minutes not months
For Clark, the power of SoftLayer lies in the ability it gives IBM to offer a dynamic Cloud infrastructure layer, or foundation, that will provide true agility for the applications and workloads that run on top of it. And it is this agility which is crucial for so many organisations as they seek to stay competitive in their respective markets. As Clark puts it: “The Cloud offers the promise of agility which allows businesses to differentiate themselves and gain first mover advantage. By enabling collaboration, analytics and a move to mobile, for example, Cloud can transform businesses and their markets, and offers significant revenue and profit growth opportunities.”
It might sound like an exaggeration, but the Cloud, in plenty of real world examples, allows organisations to configure whole new application environments in minutes rather than the months it would once have taken.
While IBM’s SoftLayer platform provides the necessary infrastructure for third parties to ‘do their own thing’ in terms of achieving such rapid application development and deployment, the company’s own Bluemix platform offers an easy way of achieving the same result. Bluemix is an open-standards, cloud-based platform for building, managing, and running apps of all types, such as web, mobile, big data, and smart devices. Capabilities include Java, mobile back-end development, and application monitoring, as well as features from ecosystem partners and open source - all provided as-a-service in the Cloud.
The combination of SoftLayer and Bluemix takes the potential of Cloud and makes it into a dynamic reality. Clark says: “I think that SoftLayer allows us to position ourselves well in the market. A lot of people have set up Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platforms, but these in their own right are not creating value to the customer – it’s all about how you can use the platform. IBM has recognised this, has taken the raw ingredients, and built around it, and is always looking to extend the platform’s usefulness. For example, take Big Data analytics, combined with SoftLayer, and use it on mobile applications, with seamless integration.”
Bluemix developments
At the end of 2014, IBM announced significant additions to its Bluemix/DevOps environment, bringing a greater level of control, security and flexibility to Cloud-based application development and delivery is a single-tenant version of Bluemix, IBM’s platform-as-a-service. The new platform enables developers to build applications around their most sensitive data and deploy them in a dedicated cloud environment to help them capture the benefits of cloud while avoiding the compliance, regulatory and performance issues that are presented with public clouds.
IBM also introduced a new, private API catalogue on its public instance of Bluemix. which will help developers to more easily access their on-premise data as their organisations experiment with and build hybrid cloud strategies. Building on its global expansion of developer resources and tools, IBM also announced it is expanding its Bluemix Garage network to Canary Wharf Group’s Level39, Europe’s largest accelerator space for financial, retail and future cities tech companies, and expanding the public Bluemix catalogue to its London data centre.
Bluemix Dedicated provides access to a collaborative, cloud-based platform in a single tenant environment, hosted in an IBM cloud centre of an organisation’s choice to allow for maximum control over where data resides. Supported with dedicated hardware from within a SoftLayer cloud centre and direct network connectivity to the enterprise, Bluemix Dedicated will give users the unique benefits of SoftLayer – including a built-in private network and unparalleled control and workload visibility – and will initially offer runtime capability along with a core set of services, with plans to expand. Initial services available include:
Cloudant’s scalable, high-performance
Database-as-a-Service
Data caching to improve the speed and
responsiveness of web apps
Runtimes to give developers the flexibility
to run their apps in the coding language
of their choice
Using their most sensitive data, developers can build and run apps in Bluemix Dedicated, as well as pull in services from IBM’s public Bluemix catalogue, such as Watson APIs for cognitive computing, social data analytics and Aspera’s rapid data integration tools. Coupled with IBM’s growing network of local cloud centres, Bluemix Dedicated helps clients address concerns over data sovereignty, performance and compliance by giving them more control over the physical location of their data and production environments – enabling them to build mission-critical apps locally and globally.
For example, a UK-based retailer looking to drive sales during the holiday season could build and deploy a shopping application in a Bluemix Dedicated environment in IBM’s London cloud centre to help it avoid the performance issues that can be presented by the noisy-neighbour problem in public clouds. IBM is also introducing a new Private API catalogue to help developers gain the most out of their on premise data as they move to the cloud. The Private API catalogue allows developers to build a secure connection between on-premise systems of record and IBM’s public Bluemix catalogue through an established dedicated tunnel; turning internal data into consumable services for internal developers and third parties to build applications on top of.
For example, the same aforementioned retailer, looking to drive more personal interactions with customers, can now use Bluemix’s Private API catalogue to turn its customer database – living in its back-end, private infrastructure - into a secure, consumable API. This API can then be used to build a mobile app which can evaluate and make sense of buying habits via analytics. Matching it with geospatial tools also available on Bluemix, the retailer could enable push notifications to users, alerting them to relevant sales offerings when they are near the company’s brick-and-mortar stores.
Bluemix Garage at Level39 to
Building on the success of the Bluemix Garage in San Francisco, the newest addition to the Bluemix Garage network will open in Level39, Europe’s largest tech accelerator based in London. This Garage will serve as a central location for UK developers, product managers and designers – from both startups and enterprises alike – to collaborate with IBM consultants, as well as outside developers and entrepreneurs, to build the next generation of cloud apps.
Bluemix Garages help redefine how developers use the cloud to turn new ideas into products, helping to evolve them based on market feedback, as well as scale and integrate them with client systems through IBM Bluemix.
IBM scales DevOps
Recently, IBM also announced new, cloud-based DevOps services, software and infrastructure designed to help large organisations develop and deliver quality software faster. IBM’s new DevOps Innovation Services help address the challenge of scaling DevOps, enabling enterprises to transform their software delivery lifecycle. The hybrid cloud services combine IBM’s industry expertise from hundreds of organizational change and application development projects with the industry’s leading application development portfolio, including Bluemix, IBM’s open cloud platform-as-a-service. They also apply the flexibility of IBM’s enterprise-grade, hybrid cloud portfolio. These services are based upon SoftLayer, IBM’s premier cloud infrastructure platform.
Enterprises now have the option of combining on-premise, private and public clouds with the collaborative DevOps capabilities they need to deliver apps faster -- along with the data security, control and integration larger companies need. The new DevOps Innovation Services enable organisations to assess and benchmark their readiness for DevOps and chart a path forward, then address typical bottlenecks in key phases of software delivery, including development, testing, release and deployment and monitoring. IBM also today announced new and enhanced software and services that allow organisations to:
Manage software development with
significantly reduced set up time and
infrastructure costs using a collaborative
lifecycle management (CLM) solution on
premise or as managed service in a
virtual private cloud.
Extend mainframe development and
testing to the cloud with the IBM Rational
Development and Test solution, increasing
flexibility and capacity, while reducing
time, risk and cost. Available on premise
or as a managed service in a virtual
private cloud.
Enable the rapid design, deployment
and update of full-stack, hybrid clouds,
plus enhanced capabilities for mainframe
deployments using the new IBM
UrbanCode Deploy solution.
Free up developers to focus on innovation
with the IBM DevOps continuous-delivery
pipeline service to automate and schedule
the various stages of software deployment
to IBM Bluemix.
Continuously monitor user experience
with mobile apps in real-time with IBM
MobileFirst Quality Assurance services,
drawing on analytics to understand user
behaviour and feedback to drive product
improvements.
With regular Cloud-related technology announcements as outlined above, it’s not difficult to see why Clark is so excited by the potential (and the reality) of IBM’s Cloud portfolio.
And then there’s the small matter of the Cloud ecosystem that is also very much a part of IBM’s Cloud strategy. Yes, of course, the company, like any other, would like to own as much of the Cloud as it possibly can, but IBM recognises that the power of the Cloud is in its openness and technical ease of interoperability. which affords collaboration with plenty of other IT organisations to provide Cloud solutions.
Recently, for example, IBM and Docker, Inc. announced a strategic partnership that enables enterprises to more efficiently, quickly and cost effectively build and run the next generation of applications on the IBM Cloud and on prem via the Docker open platform for distributed applications.
Enterprises can use the combination of IBM and Docker to create and manage a new generation of portable distributed applications that are rapidly composed of discrete interoperable Docker containers, have a dynamic lifecycle, and can scale to run in concert anywhere from the developer’s laptop to hundreds of hosts in the cloud.
As the first company to work with Docker to sell integrated solutions that include Docker Hub Enterprise (DHE), IBM will be a premier provider of Docker, Inc.’s flagship product for the enterprise market. DHE provides enterprises with a turnkey solution for distributed applications that allows their developers to focus on creating differentiated services behind the firewall and assembling them together with the best content that they have selected from the 60,000+ Dockerized services available in the Docker Hub hosted repository.
In partnering with IBM, the two companies can build on Docker’s open platform including the new APIs to orchestrate applications from development through deployment. Companies will have a more efficient and effective way to build, ship and run Docker multi-container, multi-host applications in the cloud.
Additionally, this partnership will assist in increasing developer productivity and accelerate time to market for smarter applications, which are coupled with IBM’s strong security and integration with key existing enterprise systems, including service management and DevOps.
As part of this partnership, IBM is also announcing the beta of IBM Containers that is a Docker-based container service that will include open Docker-native features and interfaces, including the new Docker orchestration services. Delivered as part of Bluemix, IBM’s open cloud platform for application development, the IBM Containers service will enable enterprises to launch Docker containers directly onto the IBM Cloud on bare metal servers from SoftLayer, an IBM company. By leveraging Docker container technology, this will provide companies an environment that is simpler to manage and offers increased utilisation and performance in a more flexible execution model, expanding the types of applications that can be supported on the IBM Cloud.
And, in another example, IBM and Equinix have announced an agreement to provide enterprises direct access to the full portfolio of cloud services from SoftLayer, via the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ in nine markets worldwide spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. Equinix also announced Cloud Exchange enhancements, including API functionality that makes it easier for service providers to use a single interface to the Cloud Exchange, resulting in scalable, private and secure connections to their cloud services with near real-time provisioning.
Equinix and SoftLayer previously partnered to offer customers direct cloud connection inside Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers via SoftLayer’s Direct Link service, a dedicated network connection. By extending the partnership to include additional secure and dynamic connections through Cloud Exchange, SoftLayer provides its customers with the ability to easily move production workloads in and out of the cloud, thus better enabling them to fully realise their hybrid cloud strategies.
The SoftLayer platform is designed to give customers complete access and control over the infrastructure that they need to build in the cloud. By offering a connection to SoftLayer’s cloud services via the Equinix Cloud Exchange, SoftLayer provides its customers additional choices, a global network that extends beyond the 40 cloud centers that IBM has committed to establishing, and peace of mind through a secure, low latency connection to the cloud.
Clark summarises: “We’ve got a lot of partners in our ecosystem – companies who’ve very quickly understood the Cloud story and who work closely with us and who embrace what we’re doing, recognising how they can add value to their own core businesses. In basic terms, IBM SoftLayer is a foundation cloud layer for IBM’s expansive cloud portfolio, and almost anyone can then wrap around their own software and services. It’s a challenging and exciting time for all those involved.”
Looking ahead
Clark is understandably reluctant to make any headline-grabbing predictions as to how the Cloud market might develop over time, but he’s prepared to be surprised at just how quickly it could become the norm in terms of the IT resource on which most enterprises come to rely. “Paradigms are there to be broken,” says Clark. “Ten years ago, could I have imagined the IaaS model we have now? Absolutely not. So, who knows what the future holds?” He continues: “Initially, people are dipping their toe in the water, but we are starting to see a significant wave of organisations commit to the Cloud strategically. These companies are already benefiting from significant commercial advantages over their rivals.”
So, it seems to be more of a case of ‘Can anyone afford not to be in the Cloud?’ rather than the reverse. However, Clark is keen to emphasise that IBM’s starting point with clients is not a brainwashing ‘Cloud at any cost’ message, rather a conversation. Clark explains: “The opportunity to sit down with a client allows us to understand what it is their trying to do. Once we have this knowledge we can come up with the appropriate solution. It might be something as simple as connection as a service or a managed service for an HR department, all the way to something rather more complicated and individual – as with National Express, for example.”
Right now, the Cloud and Cloud Managed Services market is relatively immature, with many vendor organisations of all shapes and sizes trying to work out just how they can stay relevant to their customers as the emphasis switches from the commodity hardware items to the ‘clever software stuff’. IT hardware isn’t going anywhere in a hurry, but it’s become much more of a commodity item in recent times, and the intelligence and the value now lies higher up the stack, in the software applications that are the real business drivers.
In talking to Doug Clark, and studying IBM’s Cloud strategy in some detail, it’s hard not to conclude that here’s one organisation that has fully understood where the market is heading and that has a clear focus on what will be important to its customers into the future. Whether there is an IT organisation with such a rich legacy better able to deliver on the promise of the Cloud than IBM seems unlikely.
Box
IBM transforms National Express customer experience
IBM and National Express Group plc have announced a series of cloud-based innovations transforming the global transport operator by improving operational performance and customer experience. To stay ahead of competition and help anticipate travellers’ needs, National Express’s rail franchise c2c is using the latest mobile technology to provide real-time travel planning, and data analytics to enable better business decision-making.
With the increase in use of mobile devices customers now expect accurate, real-time information and updates on the move. To satisfy customer expectations IBM and c2c devised customer experience innovations built on the IBM Cloud by IBM Interactive Experience which include:
A new style of real-time mobile app for
customers to easily plan their trip door
to door by postcode. Customers can
track specific trains, and even check if
there is a coffee shop and other services
available in stations. Regular disruption
alerts will also be provided so customers
are kept updated while on the move.
Up-to-date information will be
available to on-platform staff equipped
with mobile devices to provide real time
information to customers on train
schedules and status.
An ‘automatic delay repay’ application
that will calculate delays up to the
minute and automatically repay
compensation owed to smart card
holders each month. Expected delivery
is by the end of 2015.
Dashboards that enable staff to drill
down into key performance indicator
data including travel revenue,
cancellations and delays, complaints,
employee data, and customer and
employee safety data – to derive
valuable insights and situational
awareness, often in real time. Using
the IBM Cloud c2c will be able to
analyze high volumes of previously
fragmented information from external
and internal sources.
“Our work with IBM provides the foundation for our plans to transform the experience of passengers when they travel with c2c,” said Ruth Harrison-Wood, Commercial Director for c2c. “We knew intelligence could be driven from the high volumes of operational and customer data we generate daily. IBM has helped us get a holistic view of operations that will allow us to improve customer satisfaction in multiple areas, including delivering a first in UK rail with national postcode-to-postcode journey planning.”
Using data from the Internet of Things, IBM has integrated information from sensors, known as ‘timing points’, along the tracks to pinpoint a train’s location and provide exact punctuality information in real time. This data has been correlated with timetable information to enable punctuality reports based on station-to-station and full journey estimates. “Detailed, personal punctuality reports for each passenger are just one way that real time, accurate data will help improve the customer experience,” explains Mike Tansey, Executive, Travel & Transport, IBM. “This deal is a game changer in the rail industry as it represents fully integrated software-as-a-service solution that delivers insight, speed and agility for National Express.”
The solution is delivered via the IBM Intelligent Operations Centre, (IOC) a data management and analytics platform built on the IBM Cloud. Using a SaaS delivery model for the solution enables National Express to integrate data from multiple data sources across the company. The software can be rapidly deployed to deliver up information from sensors and devices and provide analytics used by the new apps.
“The cloud model enables us to work on a subscription basis, allowing us to expand as needs change, so improvements can be built-in quickly and cost-effectively,” concluded Ruth Harrison-Wood.
National Express is working with IBM Interactive Experience, a consultancy and systems integrator ranked the world’s number one digital agency by revenue by Advertising Age, to improve customer engagement by using data analytics to deliver relevant, personalized brand experiences. The apps are built using the IBM MobileFirst Platform, which includes a complete range of tools for developers to create, deploy, manage
and secure mobile apps, on-premise or
in the cloud, and is fully integrated with
the IOC.
