IBM Finds Smart Business Offerings in the Cloud

IBM has been on a cloud roll of sorts, introducing service after service in a cloud computing frenzy. And with IBM itself admitting that it's shifting to become a high-margin services company, I doubt the cloud computing era is going to end (until, of course, the next "it" phrase comes along).

Even Joe Developer has given IBM the thumbs up signal in the cloud computing space. A survey conducted by Evans Data Corp on developers' perceptions of the major players in the cloud computing space revealed that IBM is the company that developers think of as having the best ability to execute in the private cloud setting, while Google is strongest for the public cloud.

The September survey measured 400 developers' perceptions of the leading vendors, including Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, Rackspace, VMware, Sun, and HP, among others. The developers answered questions about adoption, adoption intentions, completeness of offering, and ability to execute along with capabilities such as security, scalability, low latency, reliability, no vendor lock-in, and cost-to-value ratio. Developers also positioned the vendors as better suited to either public or private cloud offerings.

IBM Smart Business

To briefly summarize, here are a few of the cloud technologies IBM has announced are available as part of its IBM Smart Business cloud services:

Perhaps the most interesting to me, because I used to cover Lotus technologies, is IBM's hosted email solution, LotusLive iNotes. The new email service delivers cloud computing technology with a focus on reliability, privacy, and security with a price tag starting at $3 per user, per month. The solution works with Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange or can operate as a standalone program.

IBM announced in August the Smart Business Desktop Cloud subscription service, which enables end users with network-attached PCs and certain other devices the ability to access applications and data through a centrally managed computing environment. The solution provides virtual desktop computing resources and a logical, rather than a physical, method of access to data, computing power, storage capacity, and other resources. This service requires no upfront capital or onetime expense and is designed to provide enhanced levels of security, resiliency, reliability, and quality for virtual desktops.

Back in June IBM announced the Smart Business cloud portfolio, which automates technology and provides self-service to specific digital tasks like software development and testing, desktop and device management, and collaboration.

Just last week IBM announced its intention to enter the cloud storage space with the Smart Business Storage Cloud, a private cloud offering that uses low-cost components in a true, scale-out clustered model not offered by its competition. Hallmarks of the solution include support for multiple petabytes of capacity, billions of files, and scale-out performance previously limited to the largest "high performance computing" systems, IBM says.

Who Benefits?

I mentioned the cloud computing hubbub to Chris Maxcer, and he suggested it's like leasing an automobile: Companies like IBM are looking for ways to continuously get money out of their customers. In the cloud computing method, a customer pays for continuous service or resources (such as data storage) that it doesn't outright own, and therefore must keep paying if it wants to continue to use those services. Sure, the company owns the data, but it doesn't own the infrastructure (which is in the cloud) and manpower that is supporting that data. And then there's always the question of security (which I've mentioned before).

For some companies, perhaps they don't have the resources to support a back-end infrastructure on their own. And then there are some shops that will likely maintain their data on IBM i, but perhaps go to the cloud for email or other business applications.
—Rita-Lyn Sanders, Senior Industry Editor