IBM to Launch New Range of Cloud Services for the Enterprise 

Today IBM announced SoftLayer is fueling hybrid cloud adoption by attracting thousands of new clients including leading enterprises. To support this ongoing growth, IBM is also launching a range of new cloud services designed for the enterprise that are based on SoftLayer infrastructure.

Just one year after its acquisition, SoftLayer has become the galvanizing force behind IBM's rapid acceleration to cloud leadership. IBM bought SoftLayer for $2 billion in July 2013 and has continued to invest significantly in its cloud portfolio.

Clients all over the world are moving to the IBM Cloud, with thousands of new clients migrating to SoftLayer in the past year alone. New enterprise customers including Macy's, Whirlpool, Daimler subsidiary moovel Gmbh, Sicoss Group and many others are transforming their operations for the emerging hybrid cloud era. Hybrid cloud computing represents the best of both worlds, as it links traditional IT systems to the cloud. Clients can maintain on-premise control of key applications and data while moving other workloads – so-called systems of engagement with customers and partners -- to the cloud for quick access to data, expansion of new services and cost reductions. In fact, nearly half of IBM's top 100 strategic outsourcing clients who are among the world's largest enterprises are already implementing cloud solutions with IBM as they transition to a hybrid cloud model.

As data becomes the next great natural resource, clients are looking for the means to efficiently store and mine their data, while protecting its privacy and security. By taking advantage of IBM Cloud, companies now have the ability to more quickly integrate existing and new services and data to drive new innovations and more easily control, manage and secure data and business applications.

In addition to new clients, more than 1,000 business partners have signed on to offer their services on SoftLayer. Firms embracing SoftLayer range from leading global players such as Avnet, Arrow Electronics and Ingram Micro, to cloud-based services and solution providers like Mirantis, Assimil8, Silverstring, Clipcard, SilverSky, and Cnetric Enterprise Solutions. Large U.S. enterprise buyers, those with 1,000+ employees, ranked IBM as their top selection of service providers that they believe would be most effective in providing IaaS for private and/or public clouds.

"In its first year, SoftLayer has proven to be a pivotal acquisition for IBM Cloud," said Erich Clementi, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Technology Services. "SoftLayer has quickly become the foundation of IBM's cloud portfolio anchoring our infrastructure, platform andsoftware-as-a-service offerings and transforming the fortunes of many industry companies from Web start ups to established enterprises looking for the speed, flexibility and security that hybrid cloud environments provide. Of all the options for public or private clouds in the market, IBM Cloud with all of its resources, assets and expertise is the logical choice for a world where the volume and complexity of data-rich workloads grows exponentially every day."

IBM Offers new Cloud Services for the Enterprise; Designed to Tackle Big Data

With big data creating demand for cloud, SoftLayer will play a pivotal role in delivering IBM's rich data and analytics portfolio to clients faster, more effectively and efficiently. Among the offerings, IBM will make available via the Bluemix developer platform and IBM marketplace:

• Watson Engagement Advisor on SoftLayer which allows organizations to gain timely and actionable insights from big data, transforming the client experience through natural conversational interactions with system that get smarter with use. Running on IBM's POWER8 processor, IBM Power Systems integrated into SoftLayer's infrastructure will handle big data, analytics and cognitive requirements in the cloud with unprecedented speed.

• Watson Developer Cloud on SoftLayer allows unprecedented access for third party developers, entrepreneurs, academics, and system integrators looking to harness Watson's cognitive capabilities in the products and services they bring to market.

• IBM is now offering more than 300 services within the IBM cloud marketplace that is based on SoftLayer. This includes data and analytics and SoftLayer offerings such as the IBM multi-enterprise Relationship Management SaaS that connects and manages shared business processes across a variety of communities, Time Series Database that connects applications to the Internet of Things and Analytics Warehouse which provides an agile platform for data warehousing and analytics.

• Aspera high-speed transfer technology is now also available on SoftLayer enabling users to move large unstructured and structured data with maximum speed and security, regardless of data size, distance or network conditions.

• Code name Elastic Storage is a new software-defined storage-as-a-service offering built on SoftLayer. It provides organizations with high-speed access to large volumes of data and seamless data management between their on-premises infrastructure and the cloud.

• SoftLayer expands hourly billing for bare-metal servers bringing the key pay-as-you-go benefits of virtual server consumption to dedicated resources. Bare metal servers provide the increased performance and privacy that many enterprises desire.

• IBM Cloud modular management is a fully automated service management system to help companies to more easily govern new cloud application environments. IBM Cloud Modular management enables companies with the choice and flexibility to pick the services they want to manage on their own or have IBM manage for them.

• Jumpgate is another innovation from SoftLayer that will play a key role in helping businesses build their own hybrid cloud environments. Jumpgate allows for interoperability between clouds by providing compatibility between the OpenStack API and a provider's proprietary API.