IBM Expands Global Cloud Capabilities with Advanced SmartCloud Services and New Customer Adoption

ARMONK, N.Y., May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As businesses embrace the transformative power of cloud computing to gain a significant advantage, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled advancements to its SmartCloud Services and announced new customers and partners that demonstrate IBM SmartCloud is a leading enterprise cloud platform for business. 

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IBM has seen rapid adoption of its SmartCloud portfolio as customers and partners move to the cloud. IBM manages massive amounts of data and client transactions in its cloud environments, including:

• 1 million enterprise application users working on the IBM Cloud
• More than $100 billion in commerce transactions a year in the cloud
• 4.5 million daily client transactions conducted through the IBM Cloud

Customers and partners are increasingly choosing IBM SmartCloud services, software and hardware to expand into new markets, enable their mobile workforces and develop enterprise applications more efficiently.

"Companies are starting to understand that cloud is more than just about gaining efficiencies and cost savings, it's about driving the kind of fundamental innovation that provides lasting marketplace advantage," said Paul Loftus, general manager, IBM Global Technology Services. "We are helping all kinds of clients manage enterprise applications and processes in the cloud as well as leverage new cloud centric applications while meeting their unique requirements for governance, security and portability."

Open Innovation in the Cloud
TopCoder®, Inc., the world's largest Open Innovation Community of digital creators, is moving its global community of more than 400,000 developers - the largest community of its kind – to IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. These developers help organizations succeed by efficiently and effectively supporting their entire innovation process—from ideation, software engineering and analytics to implementation, testing and support. 

TopCoder provides high quality application development, mobile development, user experience and graphic design, and big data project work through this competitive, multi-disciplinary, global community of developers.

SmartCloud for SAP Applications
Ogilvy & Mather, an international advertising, marketing and public relations agency, also turned to IBM to solve its critical business need to upgrade their IT environment. The IBM team is in the process of migrating Ogilvy from its current hosted environment to the SmartCloud for SAP Applications hosted in IBM's state-of-the-art, green Smarter Data Center in Raleigh North Carolina.

The Ogilvy solution includes the latest infrastructure technology, full SAP service and is pre-built, pre-configured, requiring minimal client resources to maintain their entire production SAP landscape. IBM's SAP Cloud solution also offers Ogilvy the benefits of solution scalability, and the ability to add resources for development projects with a short term commitment.

"Given the attention to cloud-based solutions, it's easy to be overwhelmed with comparisons and multiple options. However, when it comes to critical applications like SAP, we were looking for a mature model that could scale and cater to our unique prerequisites," said Yuri Aguiar, Senior Partner and CIO, Ogilvy & Mather. "The SCE+ offering fit this need very well and had the backing of a reliable global partner."

Smarter Marketing in the Cloud
OTRUM, a leading provider of interactive TV solutions and content to the hospitality industry, utilizes the Cognos analytics tool from IBM to handle marketing campaigns and highlight repeat behavior patterns associated with guest interaction and purchasing. This solution leverages Cognos on SmartCloud Enterprise to deliver custom analytics to over 500 hotels.  

OTRUM has now fully migrated all digital signage clients to the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, a move that eliminates the need for hundreds of physical servers at customer sites. As well as reducing hardware, the cloud increases efficiency by allowing for central management and distribution of data.

Expanding IBM Platform-as-a-Service
Launched as a platform-as-a-service beta program in October 2011, IBM's SmartCloud Application Services (SCAS) is expanding to a full pilot with new customers such as CLD Partners, a leading provider of IT consulting services with a particular focus on cloud computing.   

"We share IBM's vision for how enterprise customers can achieve huge productivity gains by embracing cloud technologies.  SCAS allowed us to utilize world class software in a managed environment that greatly reduced the complexity of the deployment while also providing for future scalability that our customers only pay for when they need it," said Steve Clune, Founder and CEO of CLD Partners.  "Ultimately, traditional infrastructure planning and configuration that would have required weeks was literally reduced to hours. And future flexibility as infrastructure needs change is virtually limitless."

Connected Healthcare in the Cloud
IBM is helping improve healthcare delivery in Haiti through its collaboration with 'Colleagues in Care' Global Healthcare Network. Colleagues in Care is using the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business to virtually connect medical workers and volunteers from around the globe. Using the IBM SmartCloud, the volunteers and those on the front lines taking care of patients are armed with an online medical knowledge system that includes treatment options, clinical pathways, and best practices specific to the situation in Haiti.

The network consists of approximately 200 doctors, nurses, and business professionals coming together virtually from all around the globe including Canada, China, Haiti, France, Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

To learn more about the work in Haiti, see the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWvcg08-h-w

For additional details about the project, read the following press release: http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/37743.wss

Additional new clients, including RICOH Company, Ltd., Neiman Marcus, University of Texas El Paso, Hindustan Motors, Bonduelle and Apave have chosen IBM's SmartCloud to help drive social business adoption across the enterprise. Using IBM social networking tools in the cloud, these organizations are seamlessly collaborating and sharing information and ideas, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity in a security-rich and cost-effective environment.

For these social businesses, IBM is also introducing IBM SmartCloud Archive Essentials, a cost-effective email archiving solution. IBM SmartCloud Archive Essentials provides customers with the confidence of knowing their email is archived continuously and securely, while making the data accessible for compliance and e-discovery requirements in the IBM SmartCloud. 

Ready for IBM SmartCloud Services
Launched in February, IBM's Ready for IBM SmartCloud Services validation continues to grow with over 30 new Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and partners, making it easier for clients to quickly find technology from Business Partners that are validated for IBM SmartCloud Services. In the new online directory, certified Business Partner technologies are divided into categories such as business applications, collaboration, development and test tools, infrastructure services, and security and monitoring.

New ISVs and partners include AppZero, Cloud Prime, Cohesive FT, Convertigo, Corent, Jaspersoft, NViso, SOASTA, Sproxil, SugarCRM, Vacava, Vision Solutions, Zementis, among many others.

Additionally, IBM is announcing new and expanded capabilities to its SmartCloud portfolio, including:

SmartCloud Enterprise 2.1

• Offering new and enhanced functionality in a simple to deploy, robust infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) for building and deploying innovative applications that can optionally integrate with private cloud and traditional IT elements.
• New service level agreement (SLA) of 99.9% SmartCloud Enterprise gives clients confidence in factoring cloud-centric applications for a broad array of workloads. 
• Two new Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 will add new and improved functionality for enhanced performance, flexibility and security while Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 delivers improvements in virtualization, resource management and high availability, and offers new features in storage, file system performance and identity management.
• Upgrades to the persistent storage system, enabling increased speed and performance, and upgrades to embedded KVM hypervisors providing greater security and performance improvements.

SmartCloud Enterprise +  

• Now available in North America and Europe with plans for additional global roll-out in 3rd quarter 2012.
• Unprecedented support for both x86 and P-Series - running operating systems including Windows, Linux and AIX on top of either VMWare or PowerVM hypervisors, and delivered with the proven expertise of IBM services.
• Migration Services for SmartCloud Enterprise+ with patented tools and methods to help clients speed up transition from traditional outsourcing to cloud is projected to be available in 3rd quarter 2012.
• SCE+ is designed to support different workloads and associated technology platforms including a new System z shared environment that will be available in the U.S. and U.K. later this year. 

SmartCloud Application Services

• IBM's platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will now be more widely available to select customers moving from beta to pilot stage. Customers will be able to take advantage of both Application Workload Service as well as Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service to develop and deploy applications on top of SmartCloud Enterprise to jump-start their SmartCloud Application Services (SCAS) projects.
• While in the pilot phase, customers will be able to use SmartCloud Application Services at no charge, except for the underlying IBM SmartCloud Enterprise infrastructure used by the SCAS pilot services.
• Available in English around the world, the SmartCloud Application Services pilot will run from May 15th until general availability projected for 3rd quarter 2012.  
• As part of the broader IBM SmartCloud family, SmartCloud Application Services are compatible with the newly announced IBM PureSystems family. For example, through SmartCloud Application Services clients can rapidly design, develop, and test their dynamic applications on IBM's public cloud and deploy those same applications on a private cloud built with PureApplication Systems, or vice versa.

Across both IBM SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+, IBM now supports Microsoft License Mobility program. Offering new flexible options for deploying Microsoft applications, such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server on IBM's SmartCloud Enterprise, customers can choose between deploying Microsoft applications on premises or on IBM's SmartCloud leveraging the value of volume licenses with Microsoft's Software Assurance. This option can help customers lower operating costs using IBM's SmartCloud shared infrastructure. 

Financing provided by IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing arm of IBM, helps credit-qualified clients make the transition to cloud computing with low-rate financing for cloud solutions and zero percent loans for IBM software.  Financing helps clients accelerates their cloud project's cash flow break-even point by spreading upfront costs over time, enabling them to utilizing cash reserves for other strategic investments.

For more information on IBM's cloud financing options, visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/financing/us/cloud/

About IBM Cloud Computing
IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. IBM is unique in bringing together key cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions, and a network of global delivery centers. For more information about IBM cloud solutions, visit www.ibm.com/smartcloud. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ibmcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com.

IBM Media Contact
Steve Tomasco
IBM Media Relations
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SOURCE IBM