Nov 24, 2008 : IBM Offers Cloud Consulting Services

📅 November 24, 2008 - In an effort to make cloud computing infrastructures more attractive for enterprise adoption, IBM (ibm.com) made a number of announcements Monday, introducing new cloud computing consulting and implementation services, and a new program to validate the resiliency of companies delivering applications or services to clients in a cloud environment.


IBM Offers Businesses a Ladder to the Cloud

According to the company's announcement, IBM's new cloud computing services will help businesses of all sizes take advantage of the cloud computing model, quickly gaining steam. The company is applying its industry-specific consulting expertise and established technology record to offer secure, practical services to companies in public, private and hybrid cloud models.

IBM Global Business Services will offer industry-specific business consulting services for cloud computing using an economic model for assessing the total cost of ownership for building private clouds, and/or moving data and applications off-site in a public or hybrid cloud model. IBM Global Technology Services is announcing new technology consulting, design and implementation services designed to help clients install, configure and deliver cloud computing within the data center.

Incorporating its many divisions, including its systems, software and services research and X-Force arms, its cloud security effort is aimed at re-tooling and re-designing technologies and processes, to infuse security and shield against threats and vulnerabilities in the cloud. Its business consulting services use economic modeling to assess the total cost of ownership for building and integrating clouds, helping both public and private clouds achieve business goals.

"No matter how compelling the economics are, cloud strategies can't run counter to business strategies," IBM high-performance on-demand solutions Vice President Willy Chiu said in a statement. "Over the last year in our 13 cloud computing centers worldwide, we've worked with clients to understand how to help them take advantage of both public and private clouds."

Working directly with clients, IBM Research will create replicable, cloud-delivered, industry-specific services including Lender Business Process Services or Healthcare Process Services, as well as horizontal business services like CRM and supply chain management.

IBM's China Research Lab is piloting a newly developed cloud computing platform, codenamed Project Yun, which is Chinese for "cloud," for companies to access business services, designed to make the selection and implementation of new cloud services as easy as selecting an item from a drop-down menu. Eliminating the need for back-end provisioning, IBM intends for its platform to dramatically cut the time required to deliver new services, allocating storage, server and network resources for the customer application, achieving top performance, availability and power utilization without human input.

Resilient Cloud Validation

As part of IBM's Monday cloud announcements, IBM has also announced a program to validate the resiliency of companies delivering applications or services to clients in the cloud environment, beginning in early 2009. Known as the "Resilient Cloud Validation" program, it will allow businesses who collaborate with IBM on a rigorous, consistent and proven program of benchmarking and design validation to use IBM's "Resilient Cloud" logo, which will serve as a ringing endorsement when marketing their services.

Hospital software, services, information and connectivity solutions provider Allscripts (allscripts.com) is the first company to begin the validation process, which, once completed, will help Allscripts assure clients that sensitive patient information or medical documents will be encrypted and easily recovered at a moment's notice.

"Every cloud service provider has the same objective: provide an uninterrupted flow of information for their business," IBM business continuity and resiliency services general manager Philippe Jarre said in a statement. "Since these providers power other businesses, there is a 'network effect' of downtime, it's absolutely critical to build to the highest standards of resiliency."

Reactions and Predictions

While cloud services like storage, data protection and enterprise applications have become popular, its success is marred by unpredictable performance and some high-profile downtime and recovery events with newer cloud services have created a challenge for customers evaluating the move to cloud computing.

ZDNet editor-in-chief Larry Dignan wrote in a blog entry, "Of IBM's services, its security efforts may be the most interesting. IBM said it has cooked up a company-wide project to create a security architecture for cloud computing environments. The project pulls together IBM's research and security arms with the rest of the business. The idea is that enterprises provide and get cloud services with security at least as good as what they get in traditional computing environments."

Dignan writes that IBM would do well to provide cloud computing security to a largely untapped market. Bringing order to the Wild West of cloud computing, Dignan wrote, will help pave the way for cloud adoption and also mitigate the risk of future hacking attacks, when there will be "a lot of glory and financial gain by bringing down a cloud or two."