IBM is extending its cloud infrastructure to the IBM Cloud and enhancing its offering with commercial- and enterprise-grade test and development services with a broad reach of partners and collaborative approaches. The effort follows its launch in November of a test-and-development cloud-based service. With this announcement, IBM is laying the foundation for a cloud ecosystem that will differentiate the company from Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the news is that PayPal is joining IBM as a partner to offer services to enterprise clients. This puts IBM on a a direct trajectory into the heart of the market – with Amazon in its sights. By partnering with PayPal, IBM is laying the framework for more transaction-oriented services with smart phone customers the prime target for applications developed in its partner community.
Even more significantly, this is Paypal’s first major foray into cloud computing. The company will work with IBM Labs to develop commerce systems for developers. The developers will primarily be creating their own applications, which will be sold across a PayPal platform, providing a complete set of services for building, selling and distributing.
IBM also announced partnerships with Novell, Red Hat and others that will enhance its platform as a base for enterprise-grade services such as cloud security and cloud management.
The initiative extends to the private cloud, where IBM will also offer services such as test, development and tools that fulfill the scope of a virtual ecosystem on a private data network.
Of real interest to us is the company’s offering of a collaborative network on IBM developerWorks that will act as a learning hub for IT managers about the various elements that make up the IBM Cloud.
We’ll have more in a followup post today.
