IBM SmartCloud

The IBM company announced in April, 2011 opening of own cloud service under the name IBM SmartCloud. New service from IBM will compete in the market of cloud solutions with Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and by others the main cloud to providers, at the same time being focused first of all on large corporate clients.

Users of IBM SmartCloud service will get access to all software portfolio from IBM including DBMS, monitors, software for a business intelligence and a development tool for platforms Linux, Windows and IBM AIX. IBM is also going to translate on the SmartCloud platform those cloud sentences which were already submitted earlier.

The SmartCloud service will be available in versions: Enterprise and Enterprise+, differing in both the price, and level of the control provided to clients. Service in the version of Enterprise is created first of all for problems of applications testing and provides payment in process of use. Rates in general will be comparable to Amazon services though they can differ a little from them towards increase.

Services of the Enterprise level + are given a dry run in work as key clients of IBM so far and will be completely available later this year. This class of services will give more flexible opportunities and higher level of security at higher price.

It is obvious that the offer from IBM will hardly interest such clients of Amazon as web startups or individual developers, but in business market the company has every chance to press not only Amazon, but also other suppliers of cloud services, considering its high reputation in corporate environment and the extensive customer base. Today the company already provides cloud services to such big customers as Lockheed Martin and Kaiser Permanente.

According to the chief financial executive the Mark Loughridge IBM Brand, the company sets as the purpose to increase sales of cloud services to $7 billion by 2015. The general sales of IBM this year, by estimates of analysts, can reach $123 billion.

By the end of 2012 of IBM is going to support about 200 million users of the IBM SmartCloud platform. The provided services and software products:

• IBM SmartCloud Application Services is the New service offering to the enterprises the platform for saving of time and costs for a cloud environment for the major corporate applications and also providing the high levels of security and control at deployment and providing access.
• IBM SmartCloud Foundation is the New portfolio of the advanced software products giving to the enterprises an opportunity quickly to unroll and control cloud environments within own firewalls.
• The New services for business partners of IBM and independent software developers designed to help thousands of clients from the sphere of small and medium business with mastering of model of cloud computing and management of millions of cloud transactions are IBM SmartCloud Ecosystem. Clients from the different industries, including bank service, communications, health care and public services, will be able to create more simply own cloud environments or it is safe to use the IBM SmartCloud platform.

Based on a new research of IBM in which more than 500 heads of the companies and IT services participated so far only 33% of the organizations passed from pilot projects to active use of cloud environments. However in the next three years the number of such organizations will grow more than twice. 40% of respondents believe that by 2015 cloud computing will lead to "significant changes", and 30% claim that cloud computing will support creation of new business models and new revenue streams.

These researches accurately demonstrate that the enterprises realize advantages of cloud computing, however face a specific complex of problems concerning security, reliability, standards and control when try to expand use of cloud computing out of limits of IT services and virtualization of data processing centers.

Inner pattern of strategy of IBM SmartCloud PaaS

The PaaS service gives to the organization a set of the automated and intellectual functions and tools which are over infrastructure. IBM SmartCloud Application Services provides increase in efficiency and scalability of the cloud systems and at the same time allows administrators to configure applications. Services of a cloud applied platform adapt to corporate applications and have five characteristics.

Management of lifecycle of applications. Through management of lifecycle of applications administrators can use a cloud as the integrated tool for observation of behavior of the specific application in distributed environment. The IT personnel will be able to carry out tests and developments in a cloud environment, selecting administrators the common area for real-time operation. Problems of flexible planning of applications, change managements and the software configuration can be among the general services. These types of services will allow developers and administrators to focus on improvement of functionality of the application and not to spend time for management.

General use of applied resources. In a development environment for functioning of the application access to specific types of resources can be required. In a cloud to services of engineers the centralized storage of resources which can be used in any application which they test or is developed. The possibility of quick access to these shares will allow developers to reduce complexity and cost of the application. Routing of messages or DaaS service in which the database becomes available, only when necessary can be among these shares.

Deployment of applications. Developers know that deployment of applications can be difficult. Often, at application launch it is necessary to consider other factors, for example, physical resources, or other requirements of infrastructure. In case of use of cloud computing, administrators can test and start applications needlessly in the additional hardware or other requirements of the environment.

Start and management of applications includes functions, dependent on policy, of the automated scaling and management for each application in IBM SmartCloud. Developers will also be able to work with a set of the environments created for each type of the application. This variety will allow the organizations to continue to develop applied environments and not to think of requirements of internal infrastructure.

Management of applications. With a large number of different types of applications their management can become a problem. In one environment control over cloud applied environment allows administrators of the cloud systems to have an opportunity for work. Using IBM SmartCloud, administrators will be able to start the main applications with the built-in functions of automation and management. It gives to developers the chance to carry out such tasks as change management, cloning of applications for upgrade and fast reservation of all system and also the related data.

Integration synchronization. At IBM SmartCloud there is a configured integration module which can execute synchronization of data and process them using a set of standard or specialized sets of applications. Developers will be able to build in several sets of applications needlessly in use of specialized program codes or other manual processes.

Four principles of strategy of IBM SmartCloud IaaS

The public cloud of IBM is result of purchase of SoftLayer in July, 2013. Having purchased this supplier IaaS, the company contracted its offer of SmartCloud and transferred all customers to new services based on the DPCs in the territory of the USA, in the Netherlands and Singapore.

Strengths: IBM has "a strong vision of how transition to a cloud cardinally transforms its business over time", Gartner notes in 2014. IBM has an extensive portfolio of various products of a public and private cloud and developed strategy of expansion on a number of global markets this year, including using possibilities of unique architecture of SoftLayer.

Before the purchase SoftLayer had a strong sight on providing self service features to customers in a segment of SMB, and many options of service offered by it today remain popular in this market.

What should be considered: Remembering an initial sight of SoftLayer on SMB sector, someone from customers can conclude that its offer is not ready for a corporate segment, especially as for the portal, sales and support. Its proprietary API still lacks broad support of tools from third-party developers.

The organizations understand benefits of use of cloud computing for accomplishment of resource-intensive problems, for example, of testing, application development and pilot starts of big workloads. The IaaS service allows to release resources, and eliminates need for use of several servers for local data center.

The IBM SmartCloud IaaS service offers four functions which will be able to provide availability of local resources when using cloud computing for expansion of the existing environment.

Virtual infrastructure. Virtual infrastructure of IBM SmartCloud consists of two principal components: SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise +. The first platform represents the flexible service IaaS intended for ensuring quick access to virtual server environments of a corporate class. These types of environments well are suitable for carrying out tests and developments and also work with other dynamic workloads.

Virtual desktop (VDI). Most the organizations considers VDI technology as deniability from operating systems on the physical terminal terminal. IBM Smart Business Desktop will allow the companies to implement VDI technology with a set of cloud options. Having passed to a cloud working platform administrators will be able to control costs and to provide secure access to corporate applications and data which are in the central storage.

Reservation and recovery. In all cloud environments reservation and recovery of the vital systems will always be of very great importance. IBM the SmartCloud offers the following functions of reservation and recovery:

• SmartCloud Archive provides a possibility of cloud archiving of data which allows to index, look for, take and to save the archived content. This type of effective management of data allows the organizations to use information for improvement of the procedure of decision making and ensuring compliance to regulatory requirements.
• Now function of the managed reservation of SmartCloud Fastprotect Online is offered only in the territory of the USA. This function is intended for ensuring effective 'cloud' reservation of data, and gives opportunities of almost continuous, scalable protection and recovery. SmartCloud Fastprotect Online is the ideal solution for work with the data distributed between servers, desktop computers and notebooks in different geographic locations.
• SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery offers automation and cloud tools which allow to accelerate recovery and to increase reliability of recovery of cloud servers. This service supports both physical, and virtual machines (VM) and allows engineers to recover functions of the selected servers on VM working in cloud infrastructure in IBM Recovery Center.

The managed cloud security. The IBM company proposes three different solutions which allow to ensure safety of cloud infrastructure.

• Hosted Application Security is intended for providing the expanded analysis of security systems which allows administrators to define and analyze threats.
• Hosted Mobile Security provides the current management that allows to create security systems for mobile devices which are almost ready to immediate use. This opportunity allows to protect mobile devices from theft, penetration of the malware and inadequate use.
• Managed Security offers an opportunity of permanent monitoring and systems management of security, placed in a cloud environment. IBM provides the single console of management which allows administrators to examine all infrastructure of security and to combine and select devices for type, the producer and the service level according to requirements of upcoming business.

Cloud DB2 10.5 will provide to the business analyst online

In cloud infrastructure of IBM in the form of IBM SmartCloud service the new version of DBMS will be unrolled - DB2 10.5 available from June, 2013 the press service of corporation reported on May 27, 2013.

According to statements of corporation, thanks to a set of BLU technologies (Big data, Lightening fast, Ultra easy) of Acceleration accelerating data processing by 25 times and more, SmartCloud with DB2 10.5 can be applied to analytics of real time.

BLU mechanisms optimize on speed DB2 requests to a DB in memory. In particular, at column processing only the necessary columns, and excess data are read out (for example, the duplicated occurrences) passed. Also parallel vector multiprocessor processing and, is applied to economy of the place — technology of a compression which, according to developers, does not worsen high-speed performance. About 16 main cores and 1 Terabyte or more memory are available to each copy of DB2 in "cloud".

IBM claims, SmartCloud allows the customer to apply a BI system, usual for it, but to readdress SQL- and an OLAP requests to a cloud service of IBM.

DBMS SAP HANA Now it is possible to copy to perform in SmartCloud while only for needs of testing and development, note century IBM.

2015: The cloud of IBM SoftLayer supports OpenStack tasks

On May 22, 2015 it became known of support by a cloud of IBM SoftLayer of applications on the OpenStack platform from^[1].

There was available an application development in SoftLayer and, after testing in a cloud, its transfer in local DPC for deployment. Or in case of need to receive more resources, than well in local infrastructure, the application can involve possibilities of the SoftLayer servers. According to in IBM, its services help to make it in read seconds.

IBM started the Cloud OpenStack services minimizing costs for transfer of tasks between the private cloud created on the basis of OpenStack from IBM and its own cloud by SoftLayer.

For increase in fault tolerance, the enterprise even more often distribute cloud tasks between several providers, or between a cloud and internal DPC. Such opportunities can be provided due to use of the OpenStack platform. In addition to IBM it is supported by Red Hat, HP and Oracle.

Notes