IBM SmartCloud Provisioning

IBM SmartCloud Provisioning represents the instrument of delivery of services and management of images of machines giving the chance dynamically to create virtual machines and to provide them in use. According to in IBM, given software allows to create literally in minutes hundreds of VM, and within an hour to finish their number to 4000 and more. It is also necessary to carry to advantages of the solution that thanks to it the companies can quickly start a private cloud, having involved for this purpose the minimum resources.

According to the recent research conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value institute, 90% of the organizations incline to acceptance or strongly intend to implement model of cloud computing within the next three years. The organizations take the next important step, aiming to be beyond opportunities of the virtualized data processing centers, and expand the environments of cloud computing, however on this way they face that it is accepted to call "virtual image sprawl" – "chaotic growth of virtual images".

The size of virtual images usually is from 5 to 20 gigabytes. Increase it by many thousands of virtual images created today. Large enterprises use, on average, from 5 thousand to 20 thousand virtual machines, and the management of this virtualized infrastructure demands more and more labor and finance costs from heads of information and technology services to which the problem of increase in level of IT service is assigned.

"Volumes of virtual images treble each two years, advancing increase in computing power which only doubles for this period. IT budgets also do not keep up with this growth. In such conditions to you it is necessary to expand each two years by 1.5 times physical infrastructure for support of cloud environments and to twice increase the staff of specialists. It is represented the serious financial and administrative problem absolutely incompatible with advantages and perspectives of cloud computing — Daniel Sabbah, the general manager of division of IBM Tivoli Software emphasized. — We provide much higher extent of control of deliveries of cloud services, allowing our clients quickly, easily and with small costs to move to higher levels of performance, functionality and cost efficiency exceeding possibilities of virtualization".

New offers of IBM from a portfolio of IBM SmartCloud Foundation allow the organizations to automate development, to set, manage and configure services of cloud computing in private, public or hybrid cloud-environments with the highest level of control available in the industry. The integrated opportunities of these offers will help clients to accelerate delivery, to reduce risks and it is better to control process of deployment of cloud-services and also the existing operating environments.

Deployment acceleration

IBM offers clients big advantages and flexibility, providing the best technologies and techniques for services of cloud computing. So, the Dutch Cloud company after solution deployment of IBM SmartCloud Provisioning noted significant growth in the customer base; at the same time the high level of automation implemented in the solution of IBM significantly lowered administrative loading of Dutch Cloud.

Now IT department of the company spends 80% of the working time for client migrations (on cloud-Wednesday) and only 20% of time – on administration. Time spent for administration management was reduced more than by 70%. Monthly planned income of Dutch Cloud trebled twice for the last six months, and operating expenses at the same time remained at the previous level.

"The tool for virtualization which we used earlier allowed to turn over 200 virtual cars less than for an hour — Martijn Van Zoeren, the chief executive officer of Dutch Cloud explained. — Now, using the solution IBM Provisioning SmartCloud, we can make it within five minutes. Earlier we had to change constantly software for support of all new software versions of VMware, KVM and Microsoft, and all new versions of storage systems. First this process was not work, but in process of business growth the task became impracticable. We spent 80% of our time for management and service of tools, and 20% for ensuring needs of clients".

"Thanks to IBM SmartCloud Provisioning the new services can also be deployed in minutes, but not for hours. It allows Dutch Cloud to react to the changing customer needs much quicker. The market of IaaS-solutions (Infrastructure as a Service is delivery of infrastructure as service) continues to develop, and in the next years we will face competition gain. The technology selected by us gave us the chance to achieve success in this competitive market" — Martin van Zoren added.

Improvement of quality

As the enterprises look for ways of acceleration of delivery of services, improvements of flexibility and dynamism today, many of them begin the implementation projects of cloud computing with transactions of development, testing and deployment. The SunTrust bank, in particular, uses the solution of IBM DevOps for increase in dynamism of the business, at the same time improving operational discipline, service quality, customer satisfaction, management and control. Using cloud computing SunTrust developers could achieve reduction of terms of creating applications almost five times.

Relying on experience with these and other clients, IBM will give new opportunities within the portfolio to IBM SmartCloud Continuous Delivery. The new software represents a packet of the best practical techniques for the integrated management of lifecycle of services of cloud computing. The packet integrates the solutions Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management and IBM SmartCloud Provisioning in the structure. Recent acquisition of IBM of Green Hat company in addition expands these opportunities, allowing to reduce development cycles due to optimization of a test stage as applications are translated for deployment on cloud-Wednesdays.

The clients using this software manage to achieve impressive results:

• Reduction of delivery dates of applications and services from months to one days due to end-to-end automation, standardization and reproducibility
• Reduction in cost of resources for 20% at simultaneous increase in predictability of projects of deployment due to the minimum intervention and self-service
• Growth of dynamism by 40% thanks to improvement of operational interaction and cooperation in developments
• Increase in levels of availability and performance of application services by 20% due to improvement of coordination of development processes, testing and operation.

Risk reduction, control of complexity

The enterprises consider cloud computing as a method of increase in efficiency and change of economy of information technologies. At the same time, the area of a scope of information technologies is not limited to a data processing center, networks and workstations, and extends to new classes of mobile assets with the built-in intellectual opportunities.

Clients need to exercise the same control over virtualized, distributed environment what they had over the previous IT models. To help with the solution of this task, IBM issued new offers:

• IBM SmartCloud Control Desk — gives to the organizations an opportunity to save integrity of configurations according to the planned changes and unplanned events and problems occurring in a difficult corporate IT environment for a guarantee of a continuous service, speed of reaction and management efficiency.
• IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices — helps the organizations to manage better such mobile environments as iPhone, iPad, smartphones and tablets based on the Android platform and also the Windows Phone and Symbian Nokia device and to protect them. Thanks to the fast installation borrowing read minutes, the organizations will be able to set far off politicians, to control mobile devices of employees for identification of potential cases of threat to corporate data and to delete data from devices if cases of loss or theft are noticed.
• Using key innovations in the field of the analysis of capacity of cloud-environments, use and resource optimization of data storage, the personnel will be able to pay more attention not to fight against infrastructure "bottlenecks", but implementation of the advanced techniques for IT service improvement. With respect thereto, IBM offers:

• IBM SmartCloud Monitoring — allows administrators to increase as much as possible levels of availability and use of resources environments of cloud computing by monitoring of virtual infrastructures and application of analytics for optimization of placement of workloads.
• IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center — increases flexibility, cuts down expenses, improves an indicator of use of resources and system performance of data storage through the automated processes of deployment, administration and management.