IBM Brings Cloud-Native Environment to Private Clouds

IBM has announced a new IBM Cloud Private software platform to help companies unlock billions of dollars in technology investment in core data and applications and extend cloud-native tools across public and private clouds.

IBM Cloud Private software is designed to enable companies to create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds to accelerate app development. The new platform is built on the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports both Docker containers and Cloud Foundry. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads as they evolve to any cloud environment, including the public IBM Cloud.

IBM also announced new container-optimized versions of core enterprise software, such as IBM WebSphere Liberty, Db2 and MQ – widely used to run and help secure the world’s most business-critical applications and data. This makes it easier to share data and evolve applications as needed across IBM Cloud private and public clouds and other cloud environments with a consistent experience.

An airline, for example, could use IBM Cloud Private to bring a core application that tracks frequent flyer miles into a private cloud environment and connect it to a new mobile app in the public cloud. A financial services firm could use it to keep customer data in-house as it works to meet its security and regulatory requirements while taking advantage of new analytic tools and machine learning in the public cloud to quickly identify investment trends and opportunities.

Enterprises to Spend More Than $50 Billion a Year on Private Clouds

While public cloud adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace, organizations, especially in regulated industries such as finance and health care, are continuing to leverage private clouds as part of their journey to public cloud environments to quickly launch and update applications. IBM estimates companies will spend more than $50 billion globally starting in 2017 to create and evolve private clouds with growth rates of 15 to 20 percent a year through 2020, according to IBM market projections.

 "IBM is at the forefront of empowering clients by providing a cloud platform which is built for innovation, seamless integration and is secure and compliance ready. With IBM Cloud Private, we are further helping customers embark on a cloud strategy by taking advantage of the control and security of their on-premises system with the freedom to connect or move resources to public clouds in the future," said Vikas Arora, Country Manager, Cloud Business, IBM India and South Asia. “IBM Cloud Private brings rapid application development and modernization to existing IT infrastructure and positions it to be combined with the services and experience of a public cloud platform.”

Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO and Chief Analyst, Greyhound Research said, “We at Greyhound Research believe very few IT vendors truly have the ability to handle enterprise-grade complexity of mission critical workloads in a multi-cloud environment and IBM's Cloud Private is a step in this direction. We believe while organizations gaining the ability to run a Kubernetes cluster in their own private cloud environments need support from an IT vendor like IBM who is also solving the same problem in a Public Cloud environment and hence has wealth of expertise to offer on the subject. This, in theory, can not only help orgs get started quicker but also ensure better business outcomes."

Hertz, Ilmarinen Transforming IT with Private Cloud

The Hertz Corporation, one of the top car rental companies in the world, believes both public and private cloud is critical to achieving its technology objectives.

“Private cloud is a must for many enterprises such as ours working to reduce or eliminate their dependence on internal data centers,” said Tyler Best, Hertz Chief Technology Officer. “A strategy consisting of public, private and hybrid cloud are essential for large enterprises to effectively make the transition from legacy systems to cloud. Hertz is an early adopter of both public and private IBM cloud and we could not accomplish our technology goals without private cloud as part of our overall cloud portfolio.”

Ilmarinen, a Finland firm responsible for the pensions covering approximately 900,000 Finns, has started a pilot project with IBM Cloud Private and plans to be in production in early 2018.  “Ilmarinen is excited about the capabilities in IBM Cloud Private as a flexible, compliant cloud-native platform that it can deploy and manage behind our firewall for creating new applications and modernizing traditional workloads,” said Jani Itkonen, Production Manager, Ilmarinen.

IBM Cloud Private Provides Flexible Platform with Support for Enterprise Developers

Innovations used in IBM Cloud Private are designed to simplify cloud management, accelerate app develop and maintain security across cloud environments. Key features include:

• Cloud Management Automation – Streamlined management across cloud environments to help launch, monitor and manage services and help ensure consistent security protocols.
• Security & Data Encryption – Security Vulnerability Advisor to scan containers across the cloud to surface potentially serious issues and weaknesses; Ability to encrypt all data in flight and provide for strict access control by users within a cluster.
• Core Cloud Platform – Includes a container engine, Kubernetes orchestration, Cloud Foundry and essential management tools surrounding developer runtimes, which are fully integrated and automated.
• Infrastructure Choice – Compatible with systems from leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Lenovo and NetApp, as well as IBM Systems, including IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and IBM Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix software.
• Data and Analytics – Integrations with database services, such as IBM Db2, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, to leverage data and gain business insights.
• Application Support & DevOps Tools – Containerized versions of software and development frameworks, including IBM WebSphere Liberty, Open Liberty, MQ and Microservice Builder, as part of software bundles; Optimized management and DevOps tools, including APM, Netcool and UrbanCode, which can be added for a separate fee.