IBM Wants OpenStack To Hit The Mainstream With Integration Services

IBM is upping its OpenStack momentum by making it easier for its customers to use the platform alongside IBM’s own hybrid cloud.

The firm has released a suite of tools called OpenStack Services, which effectively help customers build, launch and integrate apps in their own private cloud and in IBM’s SoftLayer hybrid cloud, with interoperability and job-moving simplified.

IBM will manage both the OpenStack environment and the infrastructure side, hosted in IBM’s global cloud data centres.

Interoperability

The firm said that as a result of the release, developers can now build and test an application in a public cloud and use the interoperability of OpenStack to deploy that same application and data across hybrid clouds including public, dedicated and local.

IBM customer Virdata said that OpenStack is “paving the way for broader cloud adoption”, while the company’s head of DevOps said: “IBM Cloud OpenStack Services gives us the ability to easily move OpenStack workloads across hybrid clouds.”

The move is IBM’s latest attempt to jostle for OpenStack superiority, and break the open source cloud project into the wider IT consciousness. By making it easier for IBM customers to use OpenStack, the firm is hoping to see increased adoption, and ergo monetisation.

IBM, alongside fellow OpenStackers HP, Oracle, Microsoft and Red Hat, is serious about OpenStack. IBM pays a $500,000 fee to the OpenStack Foundation every year to be a platinum sponsor, and claims to have 500 developers dedicated to working on open cloud projects to bring new cloud innovations to market.

“As a top contributor to OpenStack, IBM firmly believes that an open cloud architecture translates into significant cost savings for our clients and will rapidly expand the cloud marketplace,” said IBM Cloud Architecture vice president Angel Diaz.

“By delivering a complete portfolio of OpenStack services to the market, we are enabling our clients with what they need to quickly move applications and data across multiple cloud environments without fear of getting locked into a single cloud environment.”

Watson

IBM also announced further investments this week for its supercomputing platform IBM Watson. As part of a $100 million (£64m) drive, the company ploughed money into WayBlazer, a travel search and discovery company, to help it use Watson’s cognitive computing in letting customers plan, personalise and purchase travel.

IBM said: “WayBlazer’s Discovery Engine uses Watson technology to absorb massive amounts of data, while linking places, offers, and preferences, with social, cultural and economic data for recommendations tailored to each consumer.”

The investment is part of a $5 million Series A funding round for WayBlazer.

Sellpoints, which provides e-commerce platforms, has introduced Natural Selection, an app powered by IBM Watson that helps users to better understand individual shopper preferences and intent. The app replaces questions and surveys with the opportunity for the customer to ask questions in natural language, quickly returning a set of relevant and personalised offers in “just two taps or clicks”.

Take our cloud computing quiz here!