IBM reaches for the cloud

MANILA, Philippines – IBM recently introduced its latest business-driven and workload-centric Cloud Computing offerings in the Philippines.

Designed to improve agility, reduce costs and enhance the user experience, IBM Smart Business Cloud portfolio brings workload focus, new delivery models and sophisticated automation and service management technology and self-service to specific IT and business services.

Daryl Tan, regional service platform manager for global technology services of IBM ASEAN, said, “Cloud computing is an important new consumption and delivery model for IT and business services. Based on two years of research and hundreds of client engagements, IBM is more than ready to help clients turn complex business processes into simple services.”

“Cloud computing will trigger changes to the way IT operates as it enables CIOs to do more with less - virtualization, standardization and other fundamental features of Cloud are lowering the cost of IT, simplifying IT service management and accelerating service delivery,” Tan said.

Tan added: “By lessening the drag on data center resources, cloud computing will enable IT to hone in on a real value creation, namely innovation, which is vital to staying afloat in a highly volatile economy. Cloud computing thus provides the platform for optimizing operations while creating and delivering the kind of innovative services that propels the business forward.”

IBM’s cloud strategy and offerings focus on three key areas: workload optimization to drive the rate and degree of standardization of IT and business services, new consumption models to reflect clients’ differing circumstances and needs (i.e. private or public cloud), and enhanced service delivery across the business and IT architecture, development and operations for improved service management visibility, control and automation.

To accomplish this, IBM’s Smart Business brings sophisticated automation technology and self-service to specific digital tasks as diverse as software development and testing; desktop and device management; and collaboration.

The IBM Smart Business Cloud portfolio includes three ways to quickly deploy the cloud model:

• IBM Smart Business standardized services on the IBM Cloud;

• Smart Business private cloud services behind the firewall built by IBM (run by IBM or the client); and

• IBM CloudBurst workload optimized systems for clients who want to build to their own cloud with pre-integrated hardware and software.

All three offerings include IBM’s service management system that automates self-service, provisioning, monitoring as well as managing access and security for the cloud.

This reflects IBM’s leadership and more than $10 billion in investments over the last five years in control and automation technologies, which become critical as the digital and physical infrastructure converge.

IBM’s portfolio of offerings helps clients standardize IT and business services by type of work and function. The first offerings are optimized for two areas: development and test and virtualized desktops.

IBM Smart Business: Software Development & Test

In many organizations software developers are fast becoming the nucleus of innovation, crucial to all business processes. They build the services and capabilities that will underlie future revenue and generate opportunity. In addition to high cost and low utilization rates, today software developers lose a massive amount of time and productivity getting permissions and access to the systems and tools they need to do their jobs.

IBM Philippines will now offer clients three choices to deploy development and test cloud services based on their needs and requirements:

 IBM Smart Business Test Cloud - Private cloud services, behind the client’s firewall, hosted by IBM’s data centers that provide tools and interfaces designed to support developers using Java, .NET and Open Source environments. This service provides computing and storage capacity and helps clients save capital and operating costs, reduce test cycle times and minimize complexity and risks with a simple-to-use, self-service test platform that combines service request management, automated provisioning and configuration management. This service is ideal for clients who have their own infrastructure and prefer their own private cloud using services provided by IBM.