IBM and collective capitalism

IBM has added a new Cloud-based DR (Disaster Recovery) service to its SmartCloud portfolio of business services, and Doug Clark, IBM’s UK and Ireland Cloud Leader, is looking for more.

In particular he is looking to build other services that exploit the capabilities of the company’s Cloud services to build services that cannot really be obtained in any other way. One such that is currently close to his heart is what I would call the Management of Collective Capitalism:

“The Disaster Recovery tools are a good `door’ for businesses still looking to start on a move into the Cloud , but I am looking for other doors that can demonstrate real benefits to business, obvious benefits that can’t be obtained in any other way. I think I have found one in the management of joint ventures.”

The particular example Clark has in mind involves two large construction companies working together on a large joint venture project. These businesses are normally competitors, so there is naturally some need for `delicacy’ when handling some aspects of the relationship. IBM Cloud services have been used to host the joint venture’s IT requirement. It was originally selected because it offered the greater operational flexibility and fast scalability such a project required:

“In the end, however, the partners also realised there was a crucial advantage in that neither owned the systems being used, so could claim no rights over any data stored there. We found ourselves managing the whole process for them, including the relationship between them. For example, all the data can be destroyed and neither gets any benefit that has not been negotiated between them. ”

This is where the notion of collective capitalism comes to the fore. No one company now has the resources, depth or breadth of capabilities to service any but the smallest of projects these days. Joint ventures of every sort are therefore the order of the day and the ability to manage the conflicting requirements within such `collectives’ is vital for a project to have both a good outcome and a healthy profit margin. The Cloud offers a platform on which to off-load one possible area of contention – who owns the IT resources running the project.

But it also allows a business like IBM, with extensive experience in large project management, to bolt that experience to the Cloud services to build management environments for joint venture collectives. The current latest service to come from IBM is, however, the SmartCloud Resilience service. This is aimed at clients looking to protect, store and retrieve critical data in minutes, versus days, in the event of a disaster.

The new service allow customers to protect their data and applications faster, cheaper and in a more flexible manner than they can within a traditional data centre environment. They also help avoid capital expense by more efficiently monitoring operational expenses and service levels.   The new services are built round two primary components:

SmartCloud Virtualised Server Recovery tool provides a portal for remote access to bring back their business on IBM’s recovery infrastructure in case of outage. The system replicates both server software and associated data continuously.  
SmartCloud Archive provides an advanced document and records management system to deal with structured and unstructured content. It has been designed to meet stringent privacy and regulatory compliance, from advanced search and indexing and retrieval, to eDiscovery capabilities.

 The new services complement IBM’s existing SmartCloud Managed Backup service, which has been available for the last two years.  