San Francisco - International Business Machines will expand the networking services available through its SoftLayer cloud technology, trying to catch up with deep-pocketed rivals.
IBM researchers and engineers are now making regular trips to SoftLayer’s headquarters in Dallas to discuss product plans and get educated about cloud operation, said Marc Jones, SoftLayer’s chief technology officer.
Increasing cloud revenue is critical for IBM. It has tried to boost sales for operations like cloud computing and data analytics but that hasn’t been enough to make up for declines in longstanding operations - such as services and hardware - and revenue lost from divestitures.
The initiative comes almost two years after the Armonk, New York-based company acquired SoftLayer for $2 billion to help IBM compete against Google, Microsoft and Amazon.com.
“We have teams pulled together that have SoftLayer people that own and operate a global backbone, and then we have IBM distinguished engineers and research folks that know everything about where networking is and where it’s going,” Jones said in an interview. The company has held between ten and twenty such meetings this year, with some lasting as long as two days.
SoftLayer is essentially the infrastructure for IBM’s cloud operations. After the startup was acquired, IBM shut down much of its existing cloud-computing services, shifting their customers to SoftLayer.
Sharing workload
The operation plans to release features next year to give customers greater flexibility and control over how their computers are linked together within IBM’s cloud, Jones said. Clients will be able to re-allocate computers’ internet addresses, migrate a workload from one machine to another while it’s running and customise the structure of their networks, he said.
That may help close a technological gap with rivals such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, all of which have ploughed resources into cloud development.
SoftLayer also plans to open a data centre in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and is looking at a location in India. That should allow the operation to target bigger businesses than it was able to pursue before the acquisition by IBM.
“You start brainstorming and having ideas and the researchers say, ‘What about this?’ And our guys will be like, ‘That’ll never work, here’s why,’ and then you make tremendous progress,” Jones said. “We have a lot of heated debates about stuff, but it’s healthy.”
Bloomberg