IBM takes next step in grand Cloud plan

IBM has taken the next big step in its bid to command the Cloud with launch of a new Cloud Marketplace.

The marketplace brings together Big Blue's vast portfolio of Cloud capabilities and new third party services for developers, IT managers and business leaders.

A single online destination will serve as the digital front door to Cloud innovation bringing together IBM’s capabilities and those of partners and third party vendors.

For partners, IBM's Cloud marketplace provides a global path to the enterprise and new opportunities to collaborate with a network of channel partners in its ecosystem to generate new revenue streams driving cloud innovation.

According to a company statement, it will serve as a cloud innovation hub where technology meets business with hundreds of Cloud services from IBM, partners and third party ecosystem.

Clients can access a full suite of IBM-as-a-Service with 100 SaaS applications, IBM's Bluemix platform-as-a-service with composable services, SoftLayer infrastructure-as-a-service and third party cloud services.

IBM software and Cloud solutions senior vice-president, Robert LeBlanc, said, increasingly Cloud users from business, IT and development across the enterprise were looking for easy access to a wide range of services to address new business models and shifting market conditions.

"IBM Cloud marketplace puts big data analytics, mobile, social, commerce, integration, the full power of IBM-as-a-Service and our ecosystem, at our clients' fingertips to help them quickly deliver innovative services to their constituents.

It follows $1.2 billion investment to expand its global cloud footprint with SoftLayer, $1 billion in Cloud development with the launch of Bluemix, Platform-as-a-Service enabling much of IBM middleware to the Cloud.

There was also the $1 billion launch of a new business unit, the Watson Group for Cloud-delivered cognitive innovation and the acquisition of Aspera, Cloudant and Silverpop bringing the total to $7 billion invested in 17 cCloud acquisitions since 2010.

Several IBM partners including SendGrid, Zend, Redis Labs, Sonian, Flow Search Corp, Deep DB, M2Mi and Ustream have featured a wide array of Cloud services on IBM marketplace for enterprise clients.

Zend chief executive, Andi Gutmans, said IBM had brought together a full suite of enterprise class cloud services and software.

“We will support the rapid delivery of our applications through the IBM Cloud marketplace, enabling millions of Web and mobile developers, and many popular PHP applications to be consumed with enterprise services and service levels on the IBM Cloud,” he said.

SendGrid chief executive, Jim Franklin, said most Cloud marketplaces were tied to one specific product offering.

"If you don't use the particular service for which the marketplace was built - even if you're a customer of other products by the same company, that marketplace is irrelevant for you," he said.

“But the IBM Cloud marketplace will be available to all IBM and non-IBM customers.

"Whether you're using BlueMix, or SoftLayer, or another IBM product, the IBM Marketplace will be there to serve you. As a vendor, being able to reach all IBM customers from one place is very exciting.”