From IBM's recent projects we can clearly feel that IBM is moving slowly and steadily into the cloud. IBM is interested in demonstrating the success stories of small-scale applications and cloud computing, and has demonstrated the application of cloud computing to infrastructure automation and virtual desktop Services to the public and the industry. Of course, it should be added that the public cloud service is also provided by IBM, but it has very few customers in this segment.
IBM, for example, is now assisting the Bari University in Italy to provide maps and market data services to the ship industry, as well as a "genome Cloud" for Missouri University to speed up gene sequencing and analysis. International Hotel Melia is also using the Web-based desktop virtual platform developed by IBM to centralize the management of hotel chains around the world; IBM is also helping the Malaysian state-run Multimedia Development Corporation to carry out an "animated cloud" that depicts computer animated images via Internet access. Last week in the European Union, IBM launched its second cloud Services data center. In addition, it led a European Union research project called "Pincette", which aims to improve the reliability of complex information systems. But none of this is a deployment project for Enterprise cloud computing.
"Although these cloud computing applications are small, everyone is really doing creative work and they are helping to drive the development of cloud computing," he said. "said Sean Hackett, head of research at Group 451. Hackett says IBM's recent development market has focused on research and experimentation, which has been confirmed by its university projects and new research teams.
IBM does provide a broad portfolio of products and services that it calls Cloud, including online services, packaged cloud applications, and data analysis software. Today, IBM acknowledges that it is a long and arduous task to achieve an overall large-scale migration of IT systems to the cloud computing environment.
Bruce Otte, IBM's senior marketing manager for Cloud computing, believes that cloud computing represents a basic migration of markets and technologies, but added that IBM would start with small cloud projects. He says academic organizations have an ideal experimental environment with smart students and innovative administrators.
"After all, the lack of good conditions and the researchers are present," he said. ”
IBM sees cloud computing as a long-term plan
In the long run, Hackett says IBM wants to be a "hub-and-center" and a core service provider with highly standardised, integrated services to provide users with short-term, on-demand services and infrastructure applications. IBM wants to provide users with a consolidated channel and highly automated data services that enable businesses to easily use existing backend systems and data.
"It is a pre-integrated solution. "he said.
Hackett says IBM has invested 8 billion of billions of dollars in building dozens of data centers around the world. Even for an industry giant like IBM, it's a big investment. Those data centers will help IBM's services department to gradually complete the "perfect turn" to cloud computing. However, Hackett says IBM does not dabble in Amazon's Web services and applications or IT infrastructure as a service (IaaS) business.
"The complexity of cloud computing has enabled IBM to reap a lot of economic benefits," he said. "he said.
Read on: IBM's cloud computing strategy tends to be cautious.