IBM Unveils New Hybrid Cloud Solution for the Enterprise

Control and management resources: The new software will define policies, quotas, limits, monitoring and performance rules for the public cloud in the same way as on-premise resources. This allows users to access public cloud resources through a single-service catalog, enabling IT staff to govern the access and the usage of this information. As a result, organizations will more easily be able to control costs, IT capacity and regulatory concerns.

Security: IBM enables better control of users’ access by synching the user directories of on-premise and cloud applications. The automated synchronization means users will be able to gain access to the information for which they are authorized.

Application integration: Using a simplified "configuration, not coding" approach to application integration, the software combines the power of native connectivity with industry-leading applications to provide best-practices for rapid and repeatable project success.

Dynamic provisioning: IBM’s monitoring, provisioning and integration capabilities allow its hybrid cloud to support "cloud bursting," which is the dynamic relocation of workloads from private environments to public clouds during peak times. IBM’s technical and business policies control this sophisticated data integration.

The new offering makes it significantly easier to integrate and manage all of an organization's on- and-off-premise resources, and allows a task that once took several months to be done in a few days. What’s more, IBM’s offering lends itself well to those looking to build private clouds, especially when it comes to provisioning disparate services and securing the applications and data within a private cloud.

"IBM's hybrid cloud offering not only easily integrates our on-premise and cloud-based applications, but also allows us to provide live feeds of order data changes to our sales reps on any device, including mobile phones, tablets and laptops," says Randy Berger, senior application architect, Siemens. "IBM is now taking this a step further to provide even better access and management of hybrid clouds--a move that is sure to help any organization see productivity soar."

For those building private clouds, IBM’s latest service should ease many of the management and security woes, especially those created by integrating local, cloud services and applications with hosted SaaS options, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and platforms as a service. The ability to manage those heterogeneous elements as a single entity should save countless hours, while paving the way for companies of any size to dive into the private cloud market.

For more information about IBM WebSphere Cast Iron, visit: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/cast-iron-cloud-integration/.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports Strategy: Cloud SLAs (subscription required).