IBM focuses on enterprise cloud with SmartCloud services

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 13 October 2011 15:59

IBM has announced a set of cloud services and software aimed specifically at its enterprise clients. Company officials described SmartCloud as "public cloud for the enterprise".

SmartCloud Application Services is IBM's platform as a service (PaaS) offering for enterprise customers. The service, to be available in beta to US customers by the end of 2011 and worldwide by the end of 2012, includes enterprise-grade security, open Java and cross-platform support, and application infrastructure and managed services to enable development and deployment of applications.

It will run on the SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+ IaaS, which, as the name suggests, was designed to meet enterprise workloads and service levels. IBM officials claim that it also automates common SAP management tasks, dramatically reducing the time needed.

SmartCloud Foundation initially comprises SmartCloud Entry (a starter kit for private clouds on IBM Power and x86 hardware), SmartCloud Provisioning (a virtual machine provisioning system said to be capable of provisioning more than 4000 VMs in an hour), and SmartCloud Monitoring (a service to monitor storage, networks, and servers).

IBM says its SmartCloud Ecosystem already consists of hundreds of companies building applications for SmartCloud.

In related news, IBM announced an OEM agreement with Nirvanix to incorporate that company's storage technology into SmartCloud Enterprise.