IBM is all set to transform its cloud business by integrating SoftLayer brand with its Bluemix cloud platform. This new development would help the US tech giant to expand its presence in the open source world.
Acquired in 2013, SoftLayer was initially aimed to establish a dedicated cloud services division for IBM. However, years after its existence as an IBM company, the brand is now getting mingled into Bluemix. The integration of the two entities will result in a vast catalogue of infrastructure, platform and application services.
“The SoftLayer products, services, tools, systems and support you know and love will become a cornerstone of a unified Bluemix cloud experience that delivers the performance, flexibility and consistency of SoftLayer infrastructure alongside the extensive catalogue of cloud resources that include IBM Watson services, development runtimes, containers, database services and more,” said Kevin Hazard, infrastructure services portfolio marketing leader, IBM, in a statement.
Utmost important move
IBM is facing stiff competition from companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft that are leading the world of cloud. Thus, the integration has emerged as an utmost important move to survive in the market.
Released as a public beta in February 2014, the Bluemix is an advanced Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for cloud clients. It supports multiple languages such as Java, Node.js, Go, PHP and Python to attract open source enthusiasts. Furthermore, the platform is powered by Cloud Foundry, which is again an open technology developed by a small team of Googlers.
While IBM Bluemix is a major choice for enterprises, it is yet to be available worldwide and presently reaching just three regions, particularly Dallas in the US, London in Europe and Sydney in Pacific. This minimal presence would be expanded with the latest integration as SoftLayer contrarily has 19 data centres around the world.
“The most important thing to remember about this transition is that all of the SoftLayer systems, products, services, and support you know and love will remain in place as fundamental building blocks upon which the broader Bluemix catalog will be built,” Hazard adds.
As a result of the transition, the SoftLayer control portal will be integrated into the Bluemix console. Also, existing SoftLayer accounts will be linked with Bluemix accounts.
Notably, IBM is not making any change in the support team and will also provide a single invoice to its customers for all infrastructure and services.
Community offerings
This is not the first time when IBM has chosen the open source way to live with the IT evolution. Last month, IBM announced its partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu OpenStack on its LinuxOne, z Systems, Power Systems and OpenPOWER servers. The Bluemix platform itself is also helping the developer community test their apps on live cloud environments for last several months.
