Opscode and IBM Join Forces to Bring Open Source Cloud Automation to the Enterprise

SAN FRANCISCO, April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- From #ChefConf 2013, Opscode®, the foundation of the coded business, today announced it is collaborating with IBM to bring the full power of Opscode Chef™ and the Open Source Chef Community to enterprise businesses. IBM SmartCloud is built upon an open architecture for flexibility and interoperability, leveraging open-source communities, including OpenStack.  Working with Opscode, IBM will leverage the Chef ecosystem, along with more than 900 available Chef Community Cookbooks. This integration further enables IBM SmartCloud customers to automate everything from configuration management of cloud resources to continuous delivery of cloud applications.

Broadening server platform support in the cloud, Opscode also announced that Chef will support IBM Power Systems and the AIX operating system. This support enables enterprise customers to automate the configuration of their mission critical AIX-based cloud infrastructure with Chef. Opscode Chef will provide IBM customers with an easy, step-by-step, highly repeatable, and consistent process for building, managing, and deploying cloud resources and applications in large-scale AIX compute environments.

The companies are also collaborating on creating cookbooks for the IBM Software portfolio, beginning with the WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile. This cookbook will provide reusable content to allow the rapid provisioning and full application lifecycle management of WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile applications.

"Our collaboration with IBM is addressing a major transformation facing enterprises as they code their businesses to thrive in the digital economy," said Mitch Hill, CEO of Opscode.  "Leveraging the innovation and extensibility of open source, including OpenStack and Chef, Opscode and IBM are enabling businesses to maximize the potential of the cloud in rapidly delivering goods and services to market."

"Best-of-breed open source technologies are an important part of our strategy for providing the most comprehensive and flexible cloud solutions to our customers," said Moe Abdula, VP, SmartCloud Foundation at IBM. "By collaborating on product integration and Chef Community content, we'll be able to offer enterprise businesses comprehensive solutions for gaining the most value out of cloud, with minimal risk."

Opscode and IBM's collaboration also helps deliver on the promise of DevOps, leveraging Chef and SmartCloud as a common language and platform to enable more efficient communication and collaboration between development and IT operations teams.

"The overall DevOps message is compelling, because many enterprise IT organizations want to achieve the scale-out and economies of scale of the world-class cloud providers. Its concentration on the issues of culture and technology should resonate not only within new-age Web 2.0 environments, but also with many traditional enterprise application environments." (Gartner, "DevOps: Born in the Cloud and Coming to the Enterprise," Cameron Haight, May 2011)

"One specific focus of DevOps for some IT organizations is the shift toward configuration as code. In this context, DevOps borrows from the fact that as developers code applications with business logic, the infrastructure can be coded via configuration logic or directives." (Gartner, "Cool Vendors in DevOps, 2013," Ronni Colville, Jonah Kowall, Colin Fletcher, Jim Duggan, April 2013)

IBM recently announced the acquisition of UrbanCode Inc, which complements IBM's position in DevOps.   Designed to simplify and speed the entire software development and delivery process for businesses, UrbanCode's capabilities enhance the IBM SmartCloud initiative by making it easier and faster for clients to deliver software through a cloud computing model.  As part of the transition, IBM intends to update UrbanCode technologies to leverage Chef Community cookbooks as part of software release automation processes.

The open source Chef community features tens of thousands of active users, more than 1,300 individual contributors, 200 corporate contributors, and 900 cookbooks, providing a rich ecosystem of support for IBM customers.

IBM's Moe Abdula, Vice President of IBM SmartCloud Foundation Strategy & Product Management, will be presenting on #ChefConf's main stage at Noon PT, on Friday, April 26. Mr. Abdula's presentation will focus on the role of code in defining the next generation of enterprise productivity.

About Opscode Chef

Opscode's pioneering software, Chef, is an open-source automation platform built specifically for the coded business. Chef is based on one key insight: What can express users knowledge of their IT infrastructure and also put that knowledge into action? Code can. With Chef, users model evolving IT infrastructure and applications as code. Chef makes no assumptions about environments or users' approach to infrastructure and process. The result? Infrastructure becomes testable, versioned and repeatable – all as part of an agile software delivery pipeline.

Opscode Chef is available as both on-premise and hosted versions, and as Open Source Chef. Open Source Chef is a freely available, open source Chef server that provides the basis for the on-premise and hosted commercial versions. For more information, please go here.

About Opscode

Opscode is the provider of Chef, the automation platform for the coded business. Opscode Chef provides the speed, flexibility, and efficiency to compete in the digital economy. By modeling IT infrastructure and application delivery as code, Chef empowers businesses of all sizes to easily scale to meet demand, eliminate down time, manage complexity, and accelerate time to market. www.opscode.com.

Press Contact:
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SOURCE Opscode