IBM is making more news
in the cloud with a new offering aimed directly at its massive installed base
of enterprise customers running Java apps with Websphere or on DB2 who want to
move legacy apps to cloud native architectures. According to the news release, IBM Cloud Private introduces a breakthrough integration
and management engine that, for the first time, makes it possible to seamlessly
integrate software and services between private and public clouds. IBM
Cloud Private is designed to accelerate the work of enterprise developers by
providing easy, secure access to valuable data and applications behind the
firewall through a flexible container-based architecture and extensive
API-based catalog of services.
I asked Angel Diaz, VP of Developer Technology
and Advocacy at IBM, to tell me
more about the news.
VMblog: What is the context for this announcement?
And why this offering at this time?
Angel Diaz: We
are in a multi-cloud world today. Private clouds are a meaningful part of virtually
any enterprise IT strategy we encounter as far out as we can see. The
motivation behind private cloud is not abstract - one is data control and
compliance, another is risk and cost of moving or re-writing core systems that
are proven and represent billions in investment. We estimate that private cloud spending is
running around $50B a year, growing 15-20% annually. So, this will approach a
trillion dollars in total over the next decade. Customers want cloud native
applications in the data center and in the cloud. We're making that possible.
VMblog: What specifically are you announcing today?
Diaz: IBM
Cloud Private. It's a new offering designed to unlock billions of dollars of
new value from data and processes now running on core IT systems, and needed by
developers to fuel cloud apps. IBM Cloud Private combines open-source, cloud-native development and
management tools with the power of existing systems and skills at the core of
the enterprise like Websphere, DB2 and MQ software, not to mention the
12 million developers who work in Java. It transforms corporate IT systems into a flexible
cloud environment that creates a bridge to almost any public cloud.
VMblog: Can you talk about what's in it for developers?
Diaz: Now, in minutes,
developers can use IBM Private Cloud to spin up all the supporting services
they need to build sophisticated enterprise apps with enterprise level
security, privileged data access and control. It's a public cloud experience
behind the fire wall - where developers can scroll through a catalog of apps
and services that mirror those in the public cloud - everything they need incl.
databases, runtimes, servers, storage and security services. This is a cloud
solution built for the enterprise, tightly integrated
with systems and software used by major companies. It's compatible with every major systems manufacturer and can be
deployed on new or existing systems. No need to order special cloud servers.
Developers can choose their data store. IBM Private Cloud works with popular
databases -- MongoDB, PostgreSQL and IBM DB2 - for infusing core data into
existing and new apps. It comes with new
containerized versions of IBM enterprise software - WebSphere, DB2 and MQ -- to
deliver true flexibility and deeper integration of management services with any
cloud.
Don't forget, IBM enjoys the confidence of tens of thousands of
companies who use IBM middleware to run their business-critical applications,
and hold data needed to fuel a wide range of apps:
- 90% of Fortune 100 companies use WebSphere;
- 70% of the Global 500 companies use the MQ messaging platform that
allows apps and systems to communicate at very high speed;
- 22 of the top 25 banks in the world use IBM's Db2, a flexible,
massively scalable DB2 that provides twice the price performance of other cloud
alternatives (incl AWS).
VMblog: Finally, can you give us an example of a
use case IBM had in mind to help developers with this new offering?
Diaz: IBM Private Cloud supports a wide range of use cases. Let me
talk about one example that many enterprises face, how to extend existing
applications to mobile. For privacy reasons I can't name this customer, but a
major airline we work with might have a frequent flyer program that runs on its
core systems and it wants to keep it that way because it contains customer
details. With IBM Cloud Private, the airline could transition this application
to a cloud-native environment, breaking apart pieces of this monolithic
application into microservices and securely connecting it via APIs to a mobile
app. Flight attendants could use this mobile app to identify during a flight
frequent flyers and make sure they get the attention they deserve. The daunting
task of bringing the core application in the cloud and breaking it into
microservices could be done in months instead of a year or more.
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