IBM cloud computing is a set of

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

services for business offered by the information technology company IBM.

IBM Cloud IBM Cloud, (formerly known as Bluemix) is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM. Services As of 2021, IBM Cloud contains more than 170 services including compute, storage, network ...

includes

infrastructure as a service The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...

(IaaS),

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...

(SaaS) and

platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computing ...

(PaaS) offered through public, private and hybrid cloud delivery models, in addition to the components that make up those clouds.

Overview

IBM offers three hardware platforms for cloud computing. These platforms offer built-in support for

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

. IBM also offers a

application infrastructure,

Websphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications ...

, which supports programming models and open standards for virtualization. The management layer of the IBM cloud framework includes IBM

Tivoli Tivoli may refer to: * Tivoli, Lazio, a town in Lazio, Italy, known for historic sites; the inspiration for other places named Tivoli Buildings * Tivoli (Baltimore, Maryland), a mansion built about 1855 * Tivoli Building (Cheyenne, Wyoming), ...

middleware. Management tools provide capabilities to regulate images with automated

provisioning In telecommunication, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, ''"provisioning"'' equates to ...

and de-provisioning, monitor operations and meter usage while tracking costs and allocating billing. The last layer of the framework provides integrated workload tools. Workloads (in the context of cloud computing) are services or instances of code that can be executed to meet specific business needs. IBM also offers tools for cloud based collaboration, development and testing, application development, analytics, business-to-business integration, and security.

History

IBM cloud computing emerged from the union of its mainframe computing and virtualization technologies. Known as the original virtualization company, IBM's first experiments in virtualization occurred in the 1960s with the development of the

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

(VM) on

CP-40 CP-40 was a research precursor to CP-67, which in turn was part of IBM's then-revolutionary CP 67CMS – a virtual machine/virtual memory time-sharing operating system for the IBM System/360 Model 67, and the parent of IBM's VM family. CP-40 ran ...

and

CP-67 CP-67 was the ''control program'' portion of CP/CMS, a virtual machine operating system developed for the IBM System/360-67 by IBM's Cambridge Scientific Center. It was a reimplementation of their earlier research system CP-40, which ran on a on ...

operating systems. CP-67, a

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

used for software testing and development, enabled memory sharing across VMs while giving each user their own virtual memory space. With the machine partitioned into separate VMs, mainframes could run multiple applications and processes at the same time. IBM began selling VM technology for the mainframe in 1972. In February 1990, IBM released the

RS/6000 The RISC System/6000 (RS/6000) is a family of Reduced instruction set computer, RISC-based Unix Server (computing), servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT PC computer platform in ...

(which later became known as

IBM Power Systems Power Systems is a family of server computers from IBM that are based on its Power processors. It was created in 2008 as a merger of the System p and System i product lines. History IBM had two distinct POWER- and PowerPC-based hardware l ...

) based servers. The servers, in combination with the IBM mainframe, were built for complex and mission-critical virtualization. Power systems servers include

PowerVM PowerVM, formerly known as Advanced Power Virtualization (APV), is a chargeable feature of IBM POWER5, POWER6, POWER7, POWER8, POWER9 and Power10 servers and is required for support of micro-partitions and other advanced features. Support is pr ...

hypervisors with live partition mobility and active memory sharing. Live migration was introduced with

POWER6 The POWER6 is a microprocessor developed by IBM that implemented the Power ISA v.2.03. When it became available in systems in 2007, it succeeded the POWER5+ as IBM's flagship Power microprocessor. It is claimed to be part of the eCLipz projec ...

in May 2007. Next, IBM looked to implement standardization and automation in their technology in order to keep up with the proliferation of data produced by increasingly efficient hardware and data centers. This combination of virtualization, standardization and automation led to the development of IBM cloud computing. IBM began to develop a strategy for cloud computing in 2007, announcing that it planned to build clouds for enterprise clients and provide services to fill what it regarded as gaps in existing cloud environments. In October 2007, IBM announced a partnership with

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

to promote cloud computing in universities. In addition to donating hardware and machines, the two companies also provided a curriculum to teach students about cloud computing. IBM claimed in April 2011 that 80% of

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

companies were using IBM cloud, and that their software and services were used by more than 20 million end-user customers, with clients including

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passeng ...

Aviva Aviva plc is a British multinational insurance company headquartered in London, England. It has about 18 million customers across its core markets of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada. In the United Kingdom, Aviva is the largest general ...

, Carfax,

Frito-Lay Frito-Lay is an American subsidiary of PepsiCo that manufactures, markets, and sells corn chips, potato chips, and other snack foods. The primary snack food brands produced under the Frito-Lay name include Fritos corn chips, Cheetos cheese-fla ...

IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company is a joint venture of India's public sector banks (Bank of Baroda (. The company has paid-up share capital of 663 crore. It was incorporated in November 2009 and is headquartered in Mumbai. It recorded more ...

, and

7-Eleven 7-Eleven, Inc., stylized as 7-ELEVE, is a multinational chain of retail convenience stores, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The chain was founded in 1927 as an ice house storefront in Dallas. It was named Tote'm Stores between 1928 and 1946. A ...

. On 4 June 2013, IBM announced its acquisition of

SoftLayer IBM Cloud, (formerly known as Bluemix) is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM. Services As of 2021, IBM Cloud contains more than 170 services including compute, storage, networ ...

, which was used to form the IBM Cloud Services Division. By March 4, 2014, IBM acquired

Cloudant Cloudant is an IBM software product, which is primarily delivered as a cloud-based service. Cloudant is a non-relational, distributed database service of the same name. Cloudant is based on the Apache-backed CouchDB project and the open source B ...

IBM Cloud

The IBM SmartCloud brand includes three primary services: the infrastructure, software, and platform services, each of which is offered through public, private and hybrid cloud delivery models. IBM places these offerings under three umbrellas: the SmartCloud Foundation, SmartCloud Services and SmartCloud Solutions. The SmartCloud Foundation consists of the infrastructure, hardware, provisioning, management, integration and security that serve as the underpinnings of a private or hybrid cloud. Built using those foundational components, PaaS, IaaS and backup services make up SmartCloud Services. Running on this cloud platform and infrastructure, SmartCloud Solutions consist of a number of collaboration, analytics and marketing SaaS applications. IBM also builds cloud environments for clients that are not necessarily on the SmartCloud Platform. For example, features of the SmartCloud platform—such as Tivoli management software or IBM Systems Director virtualization—can be integrated separately as part of a non-IBM cloud platform. The SmartCloud platform consists solely of IBM hardware, software, services and practices. IBM SmartCloud Enterprise and SmartCloud Enterprise+ are designed to compete with products like those of

Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in Windcrest, Texas, an inner suburb of San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Austin, Texas, as well as in Australia, Canada, United ...

and

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...

. Erich Clementi, vice president of Global Technology Services at IBM, said in 2012 that the goal with SmartCloud Enterprise and SmartCloud Enterprise+ was to provide an

Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

-like experience primarily for test and development purposes and to provide a more robust experience for production workloads. In 2011, IBM SmartCloud integrated

Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities that facilitates using a network of many computers to solve problems involving massive amounts of data and computation. It provides a software framework for distributed storage an ...

-based InfoSphere BigInsights for big data, Green Hat for software testing and Nirvanix for cloud storage. In 2012, the then new CEO

Virginia Rometty Virginia Marie "Ginni" Rometty (born July 29, 1957) is an American business executive who served as executive chairman of IBM after stepping down as CEO on April 1, 2020. She previously served as chairman, president and CEO of IBM, becoming the ...

said the company planned to spend $20 billion on acquisitions by 2015. Users may build their own private cloud or purchase services hosted on the IBM cloud. Users may also purchase IBM hardware, software and services to build their customized cloud environment. By 2014, the name SmartCloud was replaced with products that have a prefix of IBM Cloud. A product called IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack was IBM's integration of OpenStack along with a multitude of value additions that would serve enterprise customers. A product called IBM Cloud Orchestrator would serve the orchestration needs of an enterprise. The aforementioned SmartCloud products have been discontinued. By 2016, the aforementioned product called IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack was discontinued, although the services organization may be using other versions of OpenStack for large scale cloud deployments.

Public, private and hybrid cloud models

IBM offers cloud delivery options including solely private cloud, solely public cloud, and variations in between. Private, public and hybrid clouds are not strictly distinct, as IBM allows the option to build a customized cloud out of a combination of public cloud and private cloud elements. Companies that prefer to keep all data and processes behind their own firewall can use private cloud services managed by their own IT staff. A company may also choose pay-as-you-go pricing. Hybrid cloud options allow for some processes to be hosted and managed by IBM, while others are kept on a private cloud or on a

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

VLAN A virtual local area network (VLAN) is any broadcast domain that is partitioned and isolated in a computer network at the data link layer (OSI layer 2).IEEE 802.1Q-2011, ''1.4 VLAN aims and benefits'' In this context, virtual, refers to a phys ...

. IBM also offers planning and consultation throughout the deployment process. IBM offers five cloud provision models: * Private cloud, owned and operated by the customer * Private cloud, owned by the customer, but operated by IBM (or another provider) * Private cloud, owned and operated by IBM (or another provider) * Virtual private cloud services (based on multi-tenanted support for individual enterprises) * Public cloud services (based on the provision of functions to individuals) The majority of cloud users choose a hybrid cloud model, with some workloads being served by internal systems, some from commercial cloud providers and some from public cloud service providers. On August 25, 2011, IBM announced the release of a new hybrid cloud model orchestrated by

IBM WebSphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications ...

Cast Iron integration of on- and off-premises resources. Enterprises can use Cast Iron integration to link their public cloud appliances— hosted on environments like

Google Apps Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and later G Suite) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet ...

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

Oracle CRM Oracle CRM is a customer relationship management system created by Oracle Corporation. It includes a number of different cloud applications that can be deployed together or used individually to analyze customer data and help companies connect and ...

SugarCRM SugarCRM is a software company based in Silicon Valley. It produces the on-premises and cloud-based web application Sugar, a customer relationship management (CRM) system. SugarCRM's functionality includes sales-force automation, marketing cam ...

and a number of others—to their existing systems or in-house, private cloud environments. Cast Iron Integration aims to reduce the time and effort needed for customized coding, in favor of simple workload provisioning through Tivoli Management Framework. The IBM public cloud offering, SmartCloud Enterprise, was launched on April 7, 2011. SCE is hosted IaaS with service level agreements (SLA)s, and can be offered in a private, public or hybrid model. The environment is hosted on IBM servers (System p or System x), with a standard set of software images to choose from. For customers who perceive that the security risk of cloud computing adoption is too high, IBM offers private cloud services. IDEAS International wrote in a white paper, "IBM believes that its clients are currently more comfortable with private clouds than public or hybrid clouds, and that many are ready to deploy fundamental business applications in private clouds." For building strictly private clouds, IBM offers IBM Workload Deployer and Cloudburst as ready-to-deploy, “cloud in a box.” Cloudburst provides blade servers, middleware and virtualization for an enterprise to build its own cloud-ready virtual machines. Workload Deployer connects an enterprise's existing servers to virtualization components and middleware in order to help deploy standardized virtual machines designed by IBM. For customers who prefer to perform their own integration of private clouds, IBM offers a choice of hardware and software building blocks, along with recommendations and a reference architecture, prior to deployment. Clients may choose from IBM virtualization-enabled servers, middleware and SaaS applications.

Cloud standards

IBM participates in several cloud standards initiatives within various standards development organizations involved in cloud service models IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, all of which work toward improvements in cloud interoperability and security. IBM is a member of

The Open Group The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of servi ...

, a council that works for the development of open, vendor-neutral IT standards and certifications. Other members of the group include HP,

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word ...

, SAP and numerous others. IBM contributed th
Cloud Computing Reference Architecture
in February 2011 to The Open Group as the basis of an industry-wide cloud architecture. IBM's CCRA is based on real-world input from many cloud implementations across IBM. It is intended to be used as a blueprint/guide for architecting cloud implementations, driven by functional and non-functional requirements of the respective cloud implementation. Within the IaaS space, IBM is a member of the Cloud Management Work Group (CMWG) within the

Distributed Management Task Force Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry standards organization that creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, s ...

(DMTF), which released a draft version of their IaaS APIs, called the

Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) is an open standard API specification for managing cloud infrastructure. CIMI's goal is to enable users to manage a cloud infrastructure in a simple way by standardizing interactions between cloud ...

(CIMI), on September 14, 2011. The CIMI APIs define a logical model for the management of resources within the Infrastructure as a Service domain. With these APIs, clients can create, manage and connect machines, volumes and networks. For PaaS and SaaS standards, IBM,

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologi ...

, EMC and others contribute to the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) technical committee within

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS; ) is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for cybersecurity, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), ...

(OASIS), which aims to provide a standardized way of managing the lifecycle of cloud services, for portability of cloud based applications. IBM participates in a number of cloud security related standards including the DMTF Cloud Auditing Data Federation (CADF) working group, and the OASIS Identity in the Cloud (IDCloud) technical committee. CADF is designed to address the need for a cloud provider to provide specific audit event, log and report information on a per-tenant and application basis. IDCloud aims to addresses the serious security challenges posed by identity management in cloud computing and investigates the need for profiles to achieve interoperability within current standards. IBM founded the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) in April 2011, with the

Object Management Group The Object Management Group (OMG) is a computer industry standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a range of technologies. Business activities The goal of the OMG was a common portable and interoperab ...

(OMG) Kaavo, Rackspace and

Software AG Founded in 1969, Software AG is an enterprise software company with over 10,000 enterprise customers in over 70 countries. The company is the second largest software vendor in Germany, and the seventh largest in Europe. Software AG is traded on t ...

, as an end user advocacy group that aimed to accelerate adoption of cloud services and eliminate barriers to security and interoperability associated with the transition to the cloud. In addition to contributing standards requirements to various standards development organizations (SDO), the CSCC also creates guides that companies use on their own path to cloud adoption.

Timeline

March 2018 *

migrated to IBM Cloud July 2016 *IBM Cloud PowerVC Manager October 2014 *IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack *IBM Cloud Orchestrator March 2014 *

acquired October 2011 *IBM SmartCloud Application Services *IBM SmartCloud Foundation *IBM SmartCloud Ecosystem *IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ August 2011 *Launch of hybrid cloud with Cast Iron Cloud Integration July 2011 *IBM opens two cloud data centers in Japan *IBM Smarter Commerce June 2011 *IBM SmartCloud Archive launch *IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery *IBM SmartCloud Managed Backup April 2011 *Launch of IBM SmartCloud *Launch of IBM SmartCloud Enterprise *IBM Workload Deployer *IBM joins Cloud Standards Customer Council November 2010 *IBM Federal Community Cloud for government organizations October 2010 *IBM Service Delivery Manager *IBM CloudBurst v2.1 (with POWER7-based hardware) * IBM Blueworks Live July 2010 *Announcement of cloud computing data center in

Ehningen Ehningen is a town in the district of Böblingen in Baden-Württemberg in Germany. Geography Ehningen is in Korngäu, on the northwestern edge of Schönbuch nature park. Historically, the city of Ehningen was located north of the Würm, but t ...

, Germany *IBM Smart Business Desktop Cloud February 2010 *IBM opens cloud computing data center in

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Sout ...

November 2009 *IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud *IBM Smart Analytics Cloud October 2009 *IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud June 2009 *IBM Smart Business Services *IBM Cloudburst (later renamed IBM Workload Deployer) January 2009 *

LotusLive IBM SmartCloud for Social Business is a suite of business networking and collaboration cloud-based services hosted by the IBM Collaboration Solutions division of IBM. The integrated services include social networking for businesses, online mee ...

collaboration suite

References

External links

* {{Major Internet companies IBM cloud services Cloud computing providers Cloud computing Cloud infrastructure Cloud platforms Cloud storage Computer-related introductions in 2010