IBM Extends PureSystems, Mobile Focus

LAS VEGAS--With 8,500 customers and partners in attendance, IBM kicked off this week's Impact conference with a number of PureSystems announcements, as well as a major escalation in its mobility capabilities. The annual event, which focuses on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and WebSphere software for SOA, showcased new offerings to make it easier to create the "patterns of expertise"software capability that debuted a couple of weeks ago with the PureSystems family of expert integrated systems. The company also unveiled Mobile Foundation, software and services targeted at enterprise mobile environments, based on its Worklight acquisition.

All of these announcements--more than two dozen--come down to three core focuses, says Marie Wieck, general manager, IBM Application and Integration Middleware: expert integrated systems, mobile enterprise and WebSphere platform-based business integration software. "We're breaking down the barriers between the data center and IT," she says. PureSystems' patterns of expertise are designed to streamline the setup and management of hardware and software resources. IBM announced a Virtual Pattern Kit to enable clients and business partners to convert technology expertise into reusable, downloadable packages of their own that can be embedded directly into the PureSystems machines to automate a wide range of manual and administrative IT tasks.

In addition, the company announced that both clients and partners will be able to access PureSystems through the IBM SmartCloud to create and test their patterns. IBM says this will help organizations radically simplify data center operations, and capitalize on the massive cost savings and efficiency gains PureSystems delivers.

IBM is also introducing several new patterns, including a pattern that gives clients the ability to foster collaboration, expertise location and sharing among their employees, IBM Business Process Manager, and a pattern that drives deployment of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence applications in 20 minutes.

Unveiled on April 11, PureSystems is IBM's response to the converged infrastructure (HP) or unified systems (Cisco) approaches of its peers, adding a new middleware layer that aims to automate both infrastructure and applications. PureSystems offers workflows from IBM and from its third-party partners, and enables IT to define its own workflows. The first two products in the family--PureFlex, which integrates server, storage and networking into one package, and PureApplication, which automates software based on the patterns and processes of IBM’s own work with customers and partners--are expected to ship this quarter in both Intel- and Power-based configurations.

There's also an interesting storage role in the PureSystems rollout, notes analyst David Hill. All in all, managing physical storage resources better yields an economic cost benefit in better (dare we say, optimal) use of storage assets; that ties in nicely to the change of IT economics goal of IBM PureSystems, he says.

Building on its recent acquisition of Worklight, the Mobile Foundation (V5.0) is a portfolio of software and services designed to help organizations capitalize on the proliferation of mobile environments -- including laptops, smartphones and tablets. IBM says this market represents a $22B opportunity that will surge to $36B by 2015.

IBM announced the acquisition of Worklight, a privately held Israeli-based provider of mobile software for smartphones and tablets, at the end of January. According to a recent IBM survey of more than 3,000 CIOs, 75% identified mobility solutions as one of their top spending priorities. In fact, for the first time ever, shipments of smartphones exceeded total PC shipments in 2011. The company added that the world's top 20 communications service providers use IBM technology to run their applications, while more than 1 billion mobile phone subscribers are touched by IBM software every day.

Another IBM survey of more than 700 CIOs found that 75% said they are embracing a mobile strategy because a flexible workplace delivers a 20% improvement in employee productivity. The CIOs said they are significantly reducing the cost of doing business by decreasing dependence on email, improving social collaboration and adopting cloud technologies to reach mobile workers.

Mobile Foundation builds on IBM WebSphere Cast Iron to connect mobile applications to a variety of cloud and back-end systems. It includes a new set of development and integration tools from IBM Worklight, new software from IBM Endpoint Manager to address the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) explosion, and a new set of services, including IBM Quick Win Pilot. New capabilities in the IBM DataPower appliances allow organizations to quickly and securely expose enterprise data and services to mobile devices.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst, Enderle Group, says PureSystems is the first real attempt to integrate an expert system into a product. "This appears to address one of the big problems with new technology: No one has time to learn it, and by going down a path of integrating expert help into the offering, once administrators get comfortable with the tool, implementing this and future like products should become far easier and far less daunting." He believes this builds on what is becoming an IBM competitive advantage highlighted by Watson--increasingly intelligent systems.

"I believe IBM’s [PureSystems] solutions may really strike a nerve among its enterprise customers," says Charles King, principal analyst, Pund-IT. "Basically, the company has taken the kinds of systems which typically require high degrees of customization/integration--and still do if IBM competitors are building them--and turned them into standard SKUs. That should vastly simplify both configuration and deployment processes."

In addition, King says, the unified management platform promises to ease efforts required of data center staff. "I’m also impressed by the degree to which PureSystems' 'patterns' leverage assets and skills provided by IBM’s ISV partners." In essence, the company is taking an approach that’s nearly diametrically opposite of the direction competitors like Oracle are heading in with highly integrated, highly homogenous vertical stacks, he says.

"With the acquisition of Mobile Foundation, IBM is repeating a BMC best practice and bringing in a cross-platform offering with the people who understand this business," says Enderle. Since Worklight doesn't have clients of its own anymore, it has the advantage of being client-agnostic, which could be incredibly important to IT executives.

"IBM is able to stand above this and, unlike the folks that build handsets, deal equally with all of them. Given that IT doesn’t really want any responsibility for the handsets, but does have to provide centralized access to them, this IBM offering should be compelling to potential IT buyers." King thinks IBM’s new Foundation for Mobile Computing is probably a riskier wager in that it’s making a sizable bet that mobility in the enterprise will fundamentally alter the traditional telecom market.

"It could be right, and given IBM’s penetration among enterprise customers--which is far more profound than anything the company attained in the telecom space--IBM could do very well here by providing clients foundational mobility management technologies," he says. "The changes rumbling through the workplace and among consumers due to adoption of mobile devices including smart phones and tablets looks to me to be a tectonic shift akin to the arrival of PCs in the late '80s and early '90s. The new Foundation for Mobile Computing suggests that, just as it did before, IBM intends to take a stand at the epicenter of this technological earthquake."

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