IBM Debuts Enterprise Cloud Marketplace 

IBM launched a new cloud marketplace that brings together IBM’s vast portfolio of cloud capabilities and new third-party services in a way that delivers a simple and easy experience for three key user groups within the enterprise – developers, IT managers and business leaders to learn, try, and buy software and services from IBM and its global partner ecosystem.

The launch of IBM Cloud marketplace represents the next major step in IBM's cloud leadership. This single online destination will serve as the digital front door to cloud innovation bringing together IBM’s capabilities-as-a-service and those of partners and third party vendors with the security and resiliency enterprises expect.

The marketplace offers a gateway for IBM’s vast global business partner ecosystem to tap into the growing $250B cloud market opportunity, with instant access to IBM’s rich intellectual capital, array of services and software capabilities and access to IBM’s vast enterprise client network. For partners, IBM's cloud marketplace provides a global path to the enterprise and new opportunities to collaborate with a network of channel partners in its ecosystem to generate new revenue streams driving cloud innovation.  

This marketplace will serve as a cloud innovation hub where technology meets business with hundreds of cloud services from IBM, partners and third party ecosystem.  Clients can access a full suite of IBM-as-a-Service with 100 SaaS applications, IBM's Bluemix platform-as-a-service with composable services, the powerful SoftLayer infrastructure-as-a-service and third party cloud services.

Today’s news is the next significant step in IBM’s continuing march toward building the most comprehensive cloud portfolio for the enterprise.  This year alone IBM announced:

• $1.2 Billion investment to expand its global cloud footprint with SoftLayer
• $1 Billion in cloud development with the launch of Bluemix, Platform-as-a-Service enabling much of IBM middleware to the cloud.
• $1 Billion in the launch of a new business unit, the Watson Group for cloud-delivered cognitive innovation.
• Acquisition of Aspera and Cloudant, bringing the total to $7 Billion invested in 17 cloud acquisitions since 2010.

"Increasingly cloud users from business, IT and development across the enterprise are looking for easy access to a wide range of services to address new business models and shifting market conditions," said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Software & Cloud Solutions. "IBM Cloud marketplace puts Big Data and Analytics, mobile, social, commerce, integration ---- the full power of IBM-as-a-Service and our ecosystem --- at our clients' fingertips to help them quickly deliver innovative services to their constituents. 

Building a Best in Class Ecosystem of Cloud Service Providers

IBM Cloud marketplace offers an ideal environment for business partners and independent software vendors to monetize their solutions as cloud services for the enterprise, Several IBM partners including SendGrid, Zend, Redis Labs, Sonian, Flow Search Corp, Deep DB, M2Mi and Ustream have featured a wide array of cloud services on IBM marketplace for enterprise clients.

“IBM has brought together a full suite of enterprise class cloud services and software and made these solutions simple to consume and integrate, whether you are an enterprise developer or forward looking business exec,” said Andi Gutmans, Zend CEO and Co-founder. “We will support the rapid delivery of our applications through the IBM Cloud marketplace, enabling millions of web and mobile developers, and many popular PHP applications to be consumed with enterprise services and service levels on the IBM Cloud.”

"Most cloud marketplaces are tied to one specific product offering. If you don't use the particular service for which the marketplace was built - even if you're a customer of other products by the same company, that marketplace is irrelevant for you,” Jim Franklin, CEO of SendGrid. “But the IBM Cloud marketplace will be available to all IBM and non-IBM customers. Whether you're using BlueMix, or SoftLayer, or another IBM product, the IBM marketplace will be there to serve you. As a vendor, being able to reach all IBM customers from one place is very exciting.”

How the IBM Cloud Marketplace Works

Clients can conveniently discover, test and experience hundreds of IBM and partner enterprise-grade cloud services online that are open, scalable and secure. Content is dynamically served up by job role and service pages offer easy, intuitive access for those interested in categories such as Start-ups, Mobile, Gaming and others. .For example, an enterprise DevOps team is looking for a better way to develop new technologies to meet fast-changing needs of the business.   Until now, they would have searched across the Web, looking at vendor sites to piece together solutions.  Today, they can consolidate their evaluation, immediate trial and purchasing of both IBM and third-party applications in the IBM Cloud marketplace and or contact IBM directly for a purchase.  

IBM's cloud marketplace has three key components:

For Line of Business Professionals

Busy business professionals from across the organization are looking for a fast, easy way to find user-friendly applications that are secure and scalable.  IBM Cloud marketplace for business will serve as a single stop where business and IT professionals can learn about, deploy and consume over 100 SaaS applications ranging from Marketing, Procurement, Sales & Commerce, Supply Chain, Customer Service, Finance, Legal, and City Managers.

For Developers

IBM's Cloud marketplace -- Dev provides an integrated, get-started-now, cloud-based development environment where individual developers, development shops and enterprise development teams can quickly and effectively build enterprise applications via leading services and application protocol interfaces (APIs).  These applications can be easily and securely integrated in hybrid on premise and off premise cloud environments. It is uniquely built on an open environment so developers can choose any open source or third party tools and integrate apps, as needed.  Building on IBM’s $1 billion investment in BlueMix, open platform-as-a-service, today IBM also announced the expansion of Bluemix with 30 cloud services, bringing advanced big data and analytics, mobile, security and devops services to developers and bringing enterprise developers into the cloud.

For IT Departments

IT managers want infrastructure they can configure and control to select their own suite of services, hardware and software; as well as reliable and scalable technology that is easy to access and implement. Cloud marketplace --- Ops provides a secure set of cloud services built on Softlayer that help clients deploy cloud services and support high performance businesses at enterprise scale. SoftLayer gives clients the ability to choose a cloud environment and location that best suits their business needs and provides visibility and transparency to where data reside, control of data security and placement with a choice of public, private or bare-metal server options. Services include Big Data, Disaster Recovery, Hybrid environments, Managed Security Services, Cloud Environments for Small and Medium Business among others.

For instance, IT managers will be able to access two new IaaS offerings from IBM's Big Data and Analytics portfolio in the Cloud marketplace. InfoSphere Streams will allow organizations to analyze and share data in motion for real-time decision management, and InfoSphere BigInsights will make it easier for developers to use Hadoop to build secure big data apps. With the addition of these new solutions, IBM now offers more than 15 solutions from its Big Data and Analytics portfolio, Watson Foundations, for business users in the Cloud marketplace. IBM's Enterprise Content capabilities will also be available to help knowledge workers actively engage and manage content in a trusted cloud environment.