New IBM Cloud Integration Technology Blends Multi-Cloud Environments

LAS VEGAS, March 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM InterConnect - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new software and services designed to solve the integration challenge of bringing together enterprise data and applications across on-premises, private and public cloud environments. IBM Cloud Integration is designed to allow clients to access and use actionable business data from sources including cloud services, messaging platforms or, application software regardless of the environment in which they reside using easy to discover APIs.

According to IDC, over 85 percent of enterprises will commit to multi-cloud architectures encompassing a mix of public cloud services, private clouds, community clouds, and hosted clouds by 2018¹. IBM Cloud Integration offers a critical link for enterprises that need to share data in a multi-cloud environment, by providing:

• Integration of cloud applications with current infrastructure,
• A link to critical enterprise and cloud data and services to support cognitive solutions.
• And the ability to manage APIs across multiple clouds to enrich cloud services with data, enable new partners and expand to new markets

For example, online retailers strive to provide a consistent buying experience while being able to maintain real-time inventory insights and quickly identify market trends to capitalize on consumer behavior. By using IBM Cloud Integration, online retailers can integrate data coming from sales and inventory applications in the cloud regardless of where they reside. They can marry this data with information from other public cloud sources like third-party market tracking services, to gain a complete view into what's trending, and how quickly they can make the most of their existing inventory and prepare future purchases. 
 
"Companies are rapidly choosing to blend their existing infrastructure within multiple cloud environments, creating a hybrid cloud framework that continues to provide them with the speed and control they require to optimize their enterprise," said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research. "By bringing together and integrating more data through an open cloud platform, we are providing our clients with the agility and control they demand while still giving them a more complete view of what is happening within their company." 

IBM also announced additional offerings and services today to help clients manage the data and services that reside within their existing IT infrastructure in public and private cloud environments, including:

• IBM Cloud Product Insights: Extends new hybrid cloud capabilities to IBM software products so that IT administrators or capacity planners can view, track, and report usage metrics in a single dashboard. Through this dashboard it is possible to track products across the enterprise, get usage reports to help optimize environments, and integrate to other hybrid cloud services or Cloud patterns.
• IBM Digital Business Assistant: Brings together hybrid cloud, data/machine learning, and process automation to boost individuals and team productivity by proactively watching for complex situations across multiple clouds, alerting users to actions, taking action on their behalf, and learning from past interactions to provide recommendations on the best action to take.
• IBM Cloud Automation Manager: Leverages Watson as a learned advisor to make informed decisions and manage multi-cloud environments with automated provisioning, orchestration, and governance. Cloud Automation Manager is designed to work with cognitive capabilities and a marketplace of pre-built automation blueprints to accelerate application deployments and simplify lifecycle management.

InterConnect is IBM's cloud and cognitive conference where more than 20,000 developers, clients and partners are being introduced to the latest advancements in cloud computing through 2,000 sessions, labs and certifications. IBM is positioning both enterprise and startup clients for success with a complete portfolio of cloud services and marquee partnerships, supporting a wide range of applications including: big data, analytics, blockchain and cognitive computing.  

For more information, visit: https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/. For the IBM InterConnect Press Kit, visit: ibm.biz/IBMInterConnect2017. Engage in the conversation through @IBMCloud and #ibminterconnect.  

1. IDC: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2017 Predictions, doc no.US41863916, Nov 2016

Media Contact:
Scott Cook
IBM Media Relations
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SOURCE IBM