As an hors d’oeuvre to some big Cloud computing announcements later today, IBM has announced that it is to acquire the privately-held cluster and grid management specialist, Platform Computing, and make it a part of its wider Cloud Computing strategy.
This is part of a larger package of announcements about the company’s new Version 2.0 of its SmartCloud services. These, the company hopes, will off enterprise users unprecedented choice, security and portability as more of them start to move critical activities to the Cloud in order to build platforms for business. IBM is expecting these additional capabilities to help it support some 200 million users by the end of 2012.
The IBM announcements include SmartCloud Application Services, a new service aimed at giving enterprises a cloud-based platform for mission-critical enterprise applications that still provides them with a high level of control and security over deployment and access.
The SmartCloud Foundation is a new portfolio of Cloud software that provides enterprises with that often essential first step of deploying private clouds within their own firewalls.
The SmartCloud Ecosystem is a collection of new services for IBM’s partner and ISV community target the small and medium business market. This is aimed at providing them with tools that help clients build their own Clouds or work securely with the IBM SmartCloud.
As for Platform Computing, it brings a client roster that includes such names such as Citigroup, Pratt & Whitney, Red Bull Racing, and Harvard Medical School. Its cluster and grid management software is already the foundational element amongst these enterprise Cloud computing environments for distributed computing. As such, it already has a strong foothold in two markets IBM has traditionally addressed as `home’ territory – High Performance Computing and managing `Big Data’.
The addition of Platform will give IBM significant additional resources in its ability to provide cloud-based HPC and big data alternatives to on-premise installations for large enterprises.
