IBM SmartCloud Foundation

IBM announced in the fall of 2011 of SmartCloud Foundation, family of solutions for private cloud environments which will allow the companies to project and unroll quickly private cloud environments with the new level of control over providing cloud services and management of them. The organizations which take the next step, going beyond virtualization of a data processing center and starting expansion of the cloud environments, are concerned by a problem of "growth of images". New offers of SmartCloud Foundation help to cope with this problem, simplifying and accelerating deployment of cloud environments and management of them.

The portfolio of SmartCloud Foundation contains the basic feature set for private environments of cloud computing created on the basis of experience of thousands of projects implemented by IBM for clients and millions of transactions in cloud-environments which are daily managed by IBM. This portfolio is intended for the help both inexperienced in new technologies, and to technically "advanced" clients in rapid implementation and mastering of the private cloud-environments "from scratch" or in conversion of their existing virtualized systems to highly effective infrastructures of cloud computing.

Many organizations look for ways of achievement of bigger flexibility and extraction of bigger benefit from the computing resources at simultaneous preserving of control over data and therefore, as expected, demand for private environments of cloud computing will double in the next ten years. According to the forecast of Forrester, the market of solutions for private cloud-environments will grow from 7.8 billion dollars in 2011 to more than 15 billion dollars in 2020.

So, for example, Virtual Computing Laboratory (VCL) is the software platform open source for cloud computing implemented in North Carolina State University – integrates a number of software technologies of IBM for private cloud-environments to offer students and teachers the improved IT services and educational services. VCL gives to the university the chance to offer, along with other resources, a number of programs for distance learning via the Internet in the protected environment and in the mode "on demand".

"The North Carolina State University offers the services which are beyond opportunities of traditional IT infrastructures of the universities — doctor Mladen Vouk, professor and the head of the department of ADP equipment in North Carolina State University reported. — We train our students better for future work which combines business with technologies. VCL allows us to provide to our students and teachers more qualitative resources in educational audiences, within programs of distance learning, in research laboratories and even at home".

The portfolio of SmartCloud Foundation contains the following offers:

• The solution IBM SmartCloud Entry is delivered as a part of a packet of IBM Starter Kit for Cloud and offers ready software modules ("construction blocks") for creation of private environments of cloud computing on the virtualized hardware IBM System x and IBM Power Systems systems. This solution provides the simplified functions of initialization (boot strap loading) and administration for cloud-Wednesdays on the Power and x86 systems with convenient in use and the self-serviced interface. The organizations can also easily and quickly scale the environments and services of cloud computing to more powerful and functionally saturated solutions on a measure of growth of business needs and increase in workloads.
• The software of IBM SmartCloud Provisioning offers the powerful mechanism of initialization and a management system for images for dynamic creation or deployment of virtual machines. This software can create hundreds of virtual machines in read minutes and be scaled to more than 4000 virtual machines less than for an hour.
• IBM SmartCloud Monitoring applies the possibilities of monitoring for ensuring bigger transparency and control of functioning of virtual and physical mediums leading in the industry with resources of storage systems, networks and servers.

"IBM applied the long-term experience with data processing centers of clients to help them in a short time and without problems to take advantage of the private environment of cloud computing — Scott Hebner, the vice president of IBM Software Group noted. — We developed SmartCloud Foundation with the purpose to offer a set of basic elements for creation and, what is more important, managements of private cloud-environments with the maximum ease".

These new SmartCloud Foundation technologies supplement the existing offers of IBM for private environments of cloud computing, such as:

• The devices optimized for workloads and previously integrated with hardware, storage systems, networks and the software for virtualization and management of services for the purpose of creation of private environments of cloud computing;
• Hybrid solutions for cloud computing which safely connect data in private and public cloud-environments;
• The device for deployment of workloads which provides access to virtual images and templates of the software necessary for private environments of cloud computing.

IBM gives to business partners an opportunity to bring the portfolio of cloud-solutions to the market. IBM also offers training courses more than for 130 thousand partners and resellers, providing them with necessary tools for setup of solutions of IBM for cloud computing in compliance with specific needs and customer requirements.