IBM Exec Outlines Roadmap & Investments for ‘Smart Clouds’ 
IBM expects the cloud will play a big role in its plans to generate $20 billion in new revenues by 2015. IDN talks with a top IBM cloud executive about Big Blue’s vision for investing to develop a new wave of smart clouds that will spell big upsides for IBM, partners and customers.
IBM expects the cloud will play a big role in its plans to generate $20 billion in new revenues by 2015. IDN talks with a top IBM cloud executive about Big Blue’s vision for investing to develop a new wave of smart clouds that will spell big upsides for IBM, partners and customers.
IBM’s Bruce Otte, a marketing executive for Big Blue’s Enterprise Initiatives for cloud computing told IDN IBM sees cloud technologies forming “a foundation for a variety of promising avenues for new revenues.”
“The cloud will get smarter, a lot of our investments now are focused on that,” Otte told IDN.
“In our view, effective cloud solutions should put the user in control, growing resources as needed and allocating [resources] to others when not needed. Smart Cloud", Otte added, “will prove to be an important source for technology innovation and perhaps more interesting as a catalyst for re-engineering industries and helping companies define and develop new business models.
Today’s cost-cutting solutions are just scratching the surface of cloud benefits", Otte said. “Clouds are lowering IT expenses for development and testing, and customers are enjoying those benefits as we’re seeing strong adoption,“ he said.
“The biggest cloud benefits to come will arise from their ability to take complexity and cost out of driving growth all across a business -- not only its IT operations,” Otte told IDN. " In fact, smarter clouds create new revenues, new ways of doing business and even new business models," he added.
IBM’s Roadmap to ‘Smart Clouds’
Five Key New Cloud Visions, Deliverables
Otte laid out some of IBM’s plans for R&D and investment aimed at building out the smart cloud ecosystem, including technologies, partners, Best Practices and delivery models – all aimed to provide cloud solutions optimized to solve business problems.
Cloud Appliances – Spurred on by its acquisition of Cast Iron, Otte told IDN that IBM is looking at other flavors of cloud appliances that can provide wide array of pre-packaged cloud-based smart services, and accelerate cloud adoption for IT and business users. “The whole idea behind an appliance will be to provide more and smarter services for quicker and deeper value,” Otte said.
Cast Iron itself has moved beyond only an appliance form-factor, and now offers customers what Otte called a “cloud delivered integration engine,” which is available via an appliance or from a cloud.
Cloud Partner Ecosystem -- IBM also plans to expand efforts to help IBM Business Partners with cloud models. At present, most prized will be those IBM partners with expertise in OS, virtualization, middleware, integration, software applications and testing. “Expanding our partners’ capabilities will allow IBM to provide users various configurations that merge well with customer requirements,” Otte said.
Cloud-Friendly Industry Frameworks - IBM is also exploring ways to develop cloud solutions / platforms with assets, workflows and Best Practice templates that meet the needs of specific industries or groups. The approach, based on one IBM now uses for its BPM (Business Process Management) offerings, will be an “integral element” to the smart cloud models, Otte told IDN.
"Members-Only” Public Cloud"
In a related smart cloud model, Otte told IDN that IBM is seeing a huge spike in interest for an affinity cloud limited to certain members or group – what IBM calls a “members-only” cloud. “This is a public shared cloud, where you need to be a member and customer ID to access it. Those types of clouds are gaining traction because there is assurance to who the users are going to be,” Otte explained. An example would be supply chain partners, or where workflows need to travel across geographies. IBM is looking at affinity clouds tailored to specific vertical industries, including agribusiness, insurance and even fisheries, Otte said.
Maturing of Cloud, Virtualized Images
One other area where Otte sees change is in the state of cloud or virtualized images. “We’ll see cloud images getting both more simple and more complex,” Otte said. "Smaller companies will adopt more standardized images, making adoption and management easier and more vanilla. Not less powerful, just more standardized,” Otte said.
“The biggest cloud benefits to come will arise from their ability to take complexity and cost out of driving growth all across a business -- not only its IT operations,”
Bruce Otte
Enterprise Initiatives for Cloud Computing
IBM.
Meanwhile, large enterprises will be able to customize and integrate mission-critical images to more closely model their end-to-end environment.
“In the end, the coming smart cloud solutions we envision will look, act and feel like traditional environments,” Otte said, “so that clouds can easily expand value and utility of on-premise assets” -- without the need for compromising what the tasks they really want to accomplish or requirements to deploy and maintain complex architectures.
