IBM (NYSE: IBM) today is announcing two new products that allow customers to seamlessly extend their investments in service-oriented architecture (SOA) into a cloud services environment. The new offerings enable clients to easily create application environments that can be deployed and managed in a "private cloud." They include:
- IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance -- a new hardware appliance that provides access to software virtual images and patterns that can be used as is or easily customized, and then securely deployed, managed and maintained in a private cloud;
- IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition -- a version of IBM WebSphere Application Server software optimized to run in a virtualized hardware server environments such as VMware, which comes preloaded in WebSphere Cloudburst.
With today's announcement, IBM is empowering clients to consolidate and manage existing resources to realize the economic and technological advantages of increasingly popular private clouds. A primary benefit to customers who already have a SOA foundation is that cloud computing enables them to now reuse and share applications.
The first hardware appliance of its kind, WebSphere CloudBurst stores and secures WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition images and patterns to be dispensed into a cloud. WebSphere CloudBurst helps customers easily and quickly develop, test and deploy business applications, ending the use of manual, complex or time-intensive processes associated with creating application environments. Once finished, resources are automatically returned to the shared resource pool and logged for internal charge-back purposes. WebSphere CloudBurst also manages individual user and group access, giving IT managers the right kind of access controls with optimal efficiency rates.
"IBM's WebSphere CloudBurst combines SOA with cloud services that allow our customers to work smarter," said Jim Deters, President of Ascendant Technology. "Our customers are looking for ways to simplify their IT environments and leverage their existing assets. WebSphere CloudBurst will help them deploy and manage SOA in a cloud environment."
These new products incorporate more than 10 years of IBM software management best practices for cost-effective, rapid, and repeatable application deployment. They also fully integrate with development and service management tools from IBM Rational and Tivoli, giving clients the seamless end-to-end support they demand.
The new IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere optimizes configuration and application deployment to customize WebSphere CloudBurst patterns, providing more than 400 field-proven, automated tasks for configuration and application deployment to WebSphere Application Server environments. Using Rational Automation Framework together with WebSphere CloudBurst can improve delivery efficiencies for development, test and product scenarios, leading to faster time to market, higher-quality software and rapid return on investment.
In addition, Tivoli Service Automation Manager is designed to support a more modern, dynamic data center and help reduce IT operational costs by automating the processes used to develop and manage a cloud computing environment. It provides the capability to request, fulfill and manage complete software stacks for the data center to automate both the deployment and management of computing clouds.
IBM is also announcing BPM BlueWorks, a cloud-based set of strategy and business process tools. BlueWorks provides business users with the collateral they need to deploy business strategies within their organizations based on industry-proven business process management techniques.
For many workloads, including application testing and development, cloud computing delivers compelling economic benefits for clients. IBM Global Services is supporting this by extending the IBM Implementation Services for Cloud Computing, an on-premise test environment for cloud applications that will include services for CloudBurst that allow customers to test applications in a secure environment before going into production.
Based on initial IBM projections, this test cloud environment can save clients as much as 50 to 75 percent on capital and licensing expenses and as much as 30 to 50 percent on operating and labor costs through automated provisioning and configuration of virtualized test resources. Additionally, these services can improve quality by reducing defects from faulty configurations and poor modeling by as much as 15 to 30 percent.
These offerings come at a time when organizations are facing a complexity and affordability crisis, in which costs to manage and power operations are becoming more expensive than the hardware and software itself. To combat this, IBM has compiled the most complete portfolio of cloud computing software and services for enterprise clients in the industry today, building on its long history in security, virtualization, standards-based innovation and large-scale computing to help clients integrate this new compute model into their enterprises.
"Like SOA, cloud computing is about re-use, service flexibility and standardization of processes," said Tom Rosamilia, general manager of application and integration middleware at IBM. "Through its vast portfolio of hardware, software and services, IBM is committed to delivering enterprise customers business agility through greater IT flexibility and smart economics."
With more than 7,000 customer implementations worldwide, IBM is the SOA market leader. This leadership is further illustrated by a thriving community of more than 120,000 architects and developers, 300 SOA-specific technology patents, 2,000 universities advancing the SOA curriculum, and 7,420 Business Partners building SOA skills, solutions and practices.
The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance and WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition will be available in the second quarter of 2009. For information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloudburst
For more information on how IBM is helping clients and business partners to make smarter, faster decisions by using SOA, visit www.ibm.com/soa
- IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance -- a new hardware appliance that provides access to software virtual images and patterns that can be used as is or easily customized, and then securely deployed, managed and maintained in a private cloud;
- IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition -- a version of IBM WebSphere Application Server software optimized to run in a virtualized hardware server environments such as VMware, which comes preloaded in WebSphere Cloudburst.
With today's announcement, IBM is empowering clients to consolidate and manage existing resources to realize the economic and technological advantages of increasingly popular private clouds. A primary benefit to customers who already have a SOA foundation is that cloud computing enables them to now reuse and share applications.
The first hardware appliance of its kind, WebSphere CloudBurst stores and secures WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition images and patterns to be dispensed into a cloud. WebSphere CloudBurst helps customers easily and quickly develop, test and deploy business applications, ending the use of manual, complex or time-intensive processes associated with creating application environments. Once finished, resources are automatically returned to the shared resource pool and logged for internal charge-back purposes. WebSphere CloudBurst also manages individual user and group access, giving IT managers the right kind of access controls with optimal efficiency rates.
"IBM's WebSphere CloudBurst combines SOA with cloud services that allow our customers to work smarter," said Jim Deters, President of Ascendant Technology. "Our customers are looking for ways to simplify their IT environments and leverage their existing assets. WebSphere CloudBurst will help them deploy and manage SOA in a cloud environment."
These new products incorporate more than 10 years of IBM software management best practices for cost-effective, rapid, and repeatable application deployment. They also fully integrate with development and service management tools from IBM Rational and Tivoli, giving clients the seamless end-to-end support they demand.
The new IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere optimizes configuration and application deployment to customize WebSphere CloudBurst patterns, providing more than 400 field-proven, automated tasks for configuration and application deployment to WebSphere Application Server environments. Using Rational Automation Framework together with WebSphere CloudBurst can improve delivery efficiencies for development, test and product scenarios, leading to faster time to market, higher-quality software and rapid return on investment.
In addition, Tivoli Service Automation Manager is designed to support a more modern, dynamic data center and help reduce IT operational costs by automating the processes used to develop and manage a cloud computing environment. It provides the capability to request, fulfill and manage complete software stacks for the data center to automate both the deployment and management of computing clouds.
IBM is also announcing BPM BlueWorks, a cloud-based set of strategy and business process tools. BlueWorks provides business users with the collateral they need to deploy business strategies within their organizations based on industry-proven business process management techniques.
For many workloads, including application testing and development, cloud computing delivers compelling economic benefits for clients. IBM Global Services is supporting this by extending the IBM Implementation Services for Cloud Computing, an on-premise test environment for cloud applications that will include services for CloudBurst that allow customers to test applications in a secure environment before going into production.
Based on initial IBM projections, this test cloud environment can save clients as much as 50 to 75 percent on capital and licensing expenses and as much as 30 to 50 percent on operating and labor costs through automated provisioning and configuration of virtualized test resources. Additionally, these services can improve quality by reducing defects from faulty configurations and poor modeling by as much as 15 to 30 percent.
These offerings come at a time when organizations are facing a complexity and affordability crisis, in which costs to manage and power operations are becoming more expensive than the hardware and software itself. To combat this, IBM has compiled the most complete portfolio of cloud computing software and services for enterprise clients in the industry today, building on its long history in security, virtualization, standards-based innovation and large-scale computing to help clients integrate this new compute model into their enterprises.
"Like SOA, cloud computing is about re-use, service flexibility and standardization of processes," said Tom Rosamilia, general manager of application and integration middleware at IBM. "Through its vast portfolio of hardware, software and services, IBM is committed to delivering enterprise customers business agility through greater IT flexibility and smart economics."
With more than 7,000 customer implementations worldwide, IBM is the SOA market leader. This leadership is further illustrated by a thriving community of more than 120,000 architects and developers, 300 SOA-specific technology patents, 2,000 universities advancing the SOA curriculum, and 7,420 Business Partners building SOA skills, solutions and practices.
The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance and WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition will be available in the second quarter of 2009. For information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloudburst
For more information on how IBM is helping clients and business partners to make smarter, faster decisions by using SOA, visit www.ibm.com/soa
