Clouds in the Big Blue sky thinking

With IBM intent on pulling in more than 5% of its revenue from Cloud Computing by 2015, Big Blue unleashed a barrage of announcements on the world this week, including new public Cloud offerings.

IBM SmartCloud comes in two flavours, Enterprise and Enterprise+, with the main difference between the two being the level of control a customer wants. The Enterprise version is pay-per-use AWS pricing model, but offers less features and security than does the Enterprise+ version which has additional options in terms of security, billing models, technology platforms, availability and management.

But in terms of the UK market, there may well be some inhibitors to take up. SmartCloud services will be offered out of a data centre in Germany, but no other European countries as yet. A UK data centre is not scheduled and IBM execs were unable to clarify when such a home grown offering would be made available.

This does limit likely take-up to customers who are not excessively concerned at the cross-border data protection, transfer and hosting implications – and almost certainly means that SmartCloud will not see traction in the public sector market, unfortunate timing as the government readies its Cloud Computing strategy for publication.

SmartCloud – in both flavours – offers what IBM UK and Ireland Cloud Leader Doug Clark calls:

“an enterprise class infrastructure...We're putting in the features that enterprises expect: in terms of capacity, industry standard operating systems and IBM enterprise software. ”

Asked if the public Cloud offering was intended to be 'Amazon with balls', Clark didn't see this as an appropriate analogy:

“ It really depends what the client wants to do, what do they want to put on the Cloud, what is suitable? ”

But over in San Francisco IBM's ultimate software supremo Steve Mills was briefing the media that IBM was in a different league to Amazon:

“There have been things like Amazon EC2, but this provides IBM quality of service. That isn’t to take away from Amazon, it’s just largely for small business. But you have to choose your design points, and this is a design for medium- and large-sized business.”

This isn't actually the first time that SmartCloud has had an airing, but it is the first time that IBM has offered it as a mainstream listed product with a fixed menu of options rather than as a custom offering for individual customers. It's a clear declaration of intent that IBM means business in the Cloud market at a time when major vendors are making high profile Cloud conversions loudly in public – see Oracle, HP and (on the same day as IBM) Dell, for instance.

Dr Katy Ring of research firm K2 Advisory reckoned that while there's much that's impressive in the IBM strategy, there's also much that remains to be explained:

“The IBM Cloud Computing announcements are a bit like one of the Seven Wonders of the World – awesome, impressive and difficult to understand. What exactly do the 13 pages of announcements mean to any single buy-side organisation? Certainly, if you’re in the UK and in our two most significant IT buying sectors (public sector and financial services) there is limited appeal as the only IBM Enterprise Cloud data centre in Europe is situated in Germany. Dell chose the same day to announce that it will have a Cloud-capable DC available in the London area by Q3 this year. ”

So, what's the relevance of the IBM announcements? Ring says:

“IBM is staking ownership of the Enterprise Cloud by pulling together its end-to-end capabilities and if you are a Big Blue customer there is much that will be of interest. Ultimately one thing is for sure if a) IBM enters the market with a comprehensive umbrella offering for the enterprise and b) fires an opening salvo in a standards battle, we know that we are all about to enter a couple of years of industry marketing mayhem.”

Clouds in the Big Blue sky thinking

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