IBM's SmartCloud Tames Life Cycle Management

IBM has been active in the cloud market for years, including launching its Blue Cloud offering back in 2007, but now the company says it is addressing the next shift in enterprise cloud adoption. According to its new study, nearly 90% of businesses are moving beyond virtualization, so the company's new SmartCloud software, introduced at Pulse 2012, offers improved visibility, control and automation for organizations to securely manage and deploy cloud services.

The new software is a suite of best-practice patterns for enabling integrated life-cycle management of cloud services and combines Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management solutions with IBM SmartCloud Provisioning. The company says its recent Green Hat acquisition will further extend these capabilities, reducing development life-cycle times by streamlining test cycles as applications are transitioned to cloud deployments.

The recent IBM Institute for Business Value study found that 90% of organizations expect to adopt or substantially deploy a cloud model in the next three years, but as they take the next step beyond virtualized data centers and expand their cloud environments, they are faced with what has become known as "virtual image sprawl." IBM says virtual images are tripling every two years, and with current operating practices, that means every two years you'd need 1.5 times the physical infrastructure to support cloud and twice the labor.

IBM Software and Systems senior VP Steve Mills says we are still in the early days of cloud computing. During a press briefing at this week's Pulse event, he said there are more than 30 million servers installed globally, but that the average Intel-based server is still only operating at 10% capacity. According to the new study, the percentage of companies innovating with cloud is expected to double by 2015. Just 16% of the respondents said they are already using cloud capabilities for "sweeping innovation," such as entering new lines of business or reshaping an existing one, but by 2015 that number will have more than doubled to 35%.

IBM says initial results show that customers using the software have seen dramatic results, including shortened delivery time (from months to days) through end-to-end automation, standardization and repeatability; 20% reduction in resource costs; 40% more agility by streamlining operation and development collaboration with in-context communication; and 20% increases in application service availability and performance.Charles King, principal analyst, Pund-IT, says he was struck by IBM's focus on cloud provisioning/management simplification and automation. "That wasn't a surprise considering the Pulse audience, and it also plays particularly well to IBM's historic strengths in systems/facilities management. But the fact is that 'virtual sprawl' that's common in highly virtualized IT infrastructures is likely to increase by orders of magnitude as companies move more fully into cloud-based processes. Helping those companies effectively manage and keep up with the rapid changes inherent in cloud environments should become a lucrative market for IBM."

Analyst Amy Wohl, editor, Amy Wohl's Opinions, thinks the breadth of IBM's cloud portfolio is most significant. "Also [significant is] their initial announcements about support for the hybrid cloud environment, including support for moving applications and data between Amazon and IBM private clouds, as well as IBM public and private clouds."

She says the most important takeaway from Pulse 2012 is the change of emphasis from "Why cloud?" to how to implement many kinds of workloads on clouds. King says IBM customers and competitors need to understand that the company is playing well and competing aggressively across multiple existing markets, and adapting quickly to the changes it sees ahead.

"For customers, that means that IBM should be a valuable, trusted partner both today and for years to come. For competitors, it means that attacking IBM with simplistic point products and hyperbolic rhetoric is a losing proposition. If those vendors can't step up their games and their solution sets, the future is likely to be even uglier than are their present circumstances."

From a whole market standpoint, IBM is just one of numerous vendors trying to claim a piece of the cloud computing opportunity, so it's important to consider the company in the context of its competition, says King. "Among systems vendors like HP and Oracle, IBM clearly seems to be in a solid leadership position across numerous markets--its middleware/software assets are miles ahead of HP, and its hardware platforms are drubbing Oracle and HP's Itanium systems. The one vendor IBM tends to ignore is Dell, and I think that's probably a mistake, particularly in relation to the cloud."

So far as the heterogeneous system management solutions that were the primary focus at Pulse, many other vendors, including CA and BMC, are formidable players, King adds. "Bottom line for IBM and its customers/prospects: The company has strong, innovative, highly integrated offerings across the entire cloud landscape, but they are not alone there."

Disclaimer: Yes I attended Pulse courtesy of IBM. And yes, I maintained my editorial integrity, despite the company's generosity.

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