IBM is this week holding its InterConnect conference in Las Vegas. If there's one thing that
Today's announcements strongly follow a hybrid cloud story. IBM is well aware that any chance it ever had to stem the tide of organizations moving to the cloud is well and truly gone. That said, however, the fact remains that existing companies are looking for vendors who can help change the way they do IT but in a way that is in context with their existing structures. So, what are we seeing from IBM this week? The announcements can be summarized as follows:
- Some new services focused on delivering hybrid Cloud,
- New cloud data centers in Australia, Canada, India and Italy
- Strategic partnerships with global systems integrators
- A customer win with Turner Broadcasting
New services
IBM claims that it is dedicating over half of its cloud development team to hybrid cloud innovations. This is the sort of announcement which is essentially meaningless, other than for the fact that it indicates how seriously IBM is approaching the hybrid opportunity. More interesting is what all those developers are actually doing. Specific projects that IBM is rolling out include:
- Enterprise Containers: IBM is articulating a fairly vague story about its new "enterprise containers". Little detail exists other than the fact that these containers will allow cloud workloads to be moved on-premises and that this will bring "enterprise-class visibility, control and security as well as an added level of automation"
- Visibility & Control: IBM's DataWorks is an analytics solution that works on data both in the cloud and on-premsies. It is designed to let developers use data sets from both public and private data sources
- Bluemix
Local : IBM's branded platform as a service (PaaS) offering that is now available as a on-premises option - Developer productivity: API Harmony is a knowledge base of APIs while Secure Gateway help developers with to securely connect data and services to Bluemix through a Passport service
- Collaboration, Orchestration and Security: IBM is delivering these services consistently across hybrid infrastructures
- Develop apps powered by Watson: IBM is delivering new tools and code to speed the development of "cognitive computing apps"
IBM is also delivering some services into beta that are based on Watson. In particular:
- Watson Personality Insights Service: The first beta service to become generally available for commercial use in Bluemix. It allows developers to integrate new cognitive capabilities that can analyze trends and patterns in social media and other public data streams
- New Beta Watson Services: including: Speech to Text, Text to Speech, Visual Recognition, Concept Insights and Tradeoff Analytics. These services are available free of charge
IBM is pointing out to the world that it is one of the top contributors to both Cloud Foundry and OpenStack and that it has "hundreds of developers advancing open technologies for the hybrid cloud market"
Some of this stuff looks interesting but it's really hard to tell until we see some more substance here. These could either be transformative announcements or simply marketing bluster. IBM is saying the right things, time will tell whether they deliver.
New data centers
Something substantive here! This is actually a relatively big deal - especially for IBM customers operating in Australia, Canada, India and Italy. In the next 30 days IBM is promising to open SoftLayer facilities in Sydney and Montreal, with Milan and Chennai promised by the end of the year. As I've said many times in the past, by rapidly broadening the footprint of its cloud data centers, IBM stands a chance of delivering a credible cloud story.
It needs to move fast, at least as fast (if not faster) than arch-rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) is increasing its own footprint. It's a race to build out the broadest footprint and IBM was always coming from behind. Its smart acquisition of SoftLayer and the pace with which it is investing in the cloud division gives one hope.
New partnerships
Both CSC and Tech Mahindra have inked deals with IBM to support development on Bluemix. It's hard to know how to take this one. On the one hand it would be easy to say that this is a meaningless announcement with no substantive meat to it. On the other, one shouldn't understate the importance of these sort of partners.
For its part, CSC is going to deliver Bluemix to its own developer ecosystem and customers. According to the companies, IBM will team with CSC to provide joint clients with enablement sessions, during which IBM experts will guide developers on how to use Bluemix to build cloud-native and cloud-enabled applications. In terms of the
The best way to judge announcements like this is to look at the tone of them. In the press release announcing the Tech Mahindra deal, IBM says that:
The engagement will help Tech Mahindra build a skilled workforce who can work on services across a wide range of services including Cloud Migration Services, DevOps and Internet of Things. Tech Mahindra will now be able to develop applications for predictive analytics and that also draw on data from the Internet of Things (IoT) for clients in the automotive and manufacturing industry.
Apart from the inexcusable excess usage of buzzwords, this statement really says nothing. Sure the IoT is important, sure DevOps is a growing movement, but what are these two companies going to do that is of any substance? You don't all of a sudden turn 5,000 workers into DevOps practitioners. I'll take a rain check on calling this a real win until I see more.
New customers
"Turner broadcasting is going to use SoftLayer for some of its services" gushes the announcement. What is actually happening is that Kaltura, a third party video platform, won the contract to power Turner's new services in Latin America. As a part (and, one assumes, a very small part) of that deal, Kaltura will host the solution on IBM SoftLayer. If this were a small vendor announcing a customer win it might be moderately impressive. But this is IBM who has a critical need to replace its diminishing and highly lucrative revenue streams with more valuable services. Simply hosting some video content on SoftLayer doesn't do that - sure it generates some revenue, but doesn't lessen the very toxic impact that commoditization and the move to utility models is having on IBM's business.
MyPOV
Maybe if I were in Las Vegas and caught up in all the handwaving and cheering I would be more positive about this but considering this show is IBM's big cloud event, and considering what a powerhouse IBM has been for a long time, I'm left underwhelmed. I don't see anything here really groundbreaking - sure the partnership deals could deliver something interesting, but it feels a bit like a long shot to me. The developer/hybrid stuff is interesting and I'll be keen to follow up in six months or so to see what has actually come of it.
It's all too easy to take pot shots at a big player like IBM. I have lots of respect for its history, its people and its amazing range of products. But the world is moving on. Sure IBM is trying hard to be an important part of that new world, but it simply isn't going far enough or fast enough to feel like it'll get there.
Of course I'm just one commentator and others see differently. One in particular who is bullish is Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. In an exchange he had this to say:
The serious progress is around SoftLayer, Bluemix and to a certain extent Watson. Serious customer interest begins as customers need answers for data center location, where IBM has a lead. Large Rational developer communities e.g in finance, communications and government are seriously looking at BlueMix. And as for Watson IBM has (finally) gotten the analytics demo right - ask a question and Watson serves the best analytical insights. And finally - some key enterprise traction with outsourcing and cloud deals like eg. Marriott, Lufthansa etc. if IBM can accelerate even more they leave traditional competition (e.g. HP et al) behind.
