Conserve energy. Consolidate resources. Make information secure and available whenever and wherever it's needed. With mandates like these, we have to be smarter about accessing, processing and storing data.
This means thinking beyond the desktop and outside our own data centers. Thinking about more intelligent ways to handle the 15 petabytes of new information we generate each day, and the massive increase of connected devices we use to work with that data. Optimized for the remarkably diverse workloads managed by businesses, organizations and governments.
It's time for a platform designed for efficient, effective computing in wide open spaces ...in other words, everywhere. It's time to think cloud.
Portraits of a Smarter Planet: Cloud Computing
A series of conversations for a smarter planet
Smarter computing needs smarter clouds
Learn how Cloud Computing helps you rethink IT and reinvent your business
To build a smarter planet, we need smarter computing—computing that is designed for big data, tuned for specific tasks and managed in the cloud.
Cloud computing, in particular, is a hot topic these days. Many businesses are discovering this new model's power to step-change IT infrastructure management—with benefits in economics, performance and integration. The incorporation of cloud computing services and systems is transforming the traditional heart of enterprise IT—the data centre. At IBM, we are seeing this in thousands of cloud deployments, and in our own public cloud, which manages 4.5 million client transactions every day.
McGill University Health Centre is implementing a private storage cloud to securely house patient data. Over 800,000 patient cases at multiple sites are available to clinicians around the clock—providing a strategic and single view of data, including clinical images. By managing in the cloud, leading marketing services provider Acxiom is realizing five times the performance of their previously installed dedicated servers. This instant infrastructure allows for massive scale, which has enabled Acxiom to add 2,700 new servers without expanding their data centre footprint. And Signature Mortgage Corporation is using cloud to help its customers securely review and sign mortgage applications electronically from the convenience of their home or office—reducing loan-processing time from an average of 7 days to 24 hours, as well as reducing costs.
Canadian enterprises are concerned about where their data is stored in the cloud, with an expectation for it to be secure and resident in Canada. In a recent survey, IDC found that close to 60% of buyers desired ‘in country' offerings, while 65% of companies were unlikely to work with cloud providers that store data outside of Canada. But local residency of data, consolidation, data centre efficiency and lower costs are just the start. Leading companies are unlocking the deeper potential of cloud as a new way to manage not just their IT but also their businesses. They're discovering how cloud can help create new marketplaces, smarter business services and profitable new revenue streams. And providing these services to innovators can profoundly change the way a company is experienced by customers, partners and society.
Through a development cloud, China Telecom is offering customers new revenuegenerating smartphone applications faster by reducing time to market from more than three weeks to less than three days. The company is growing its customer base while cutting IT costs by 50%.
True Value, a hardware retailer, used cloud to help transform the management of its supply chain across 5,000 stores in 54 countries, reducing lead time by 56% and back orders by 85%—a step change in its ability to deliver products to its customers.
But while they are moving to clouds, these leaders are not willing to compromise on fundamental business standards. They insist on strong governance to help safeguard the security and resilience of critical processes—despite far more sharing of underlying infrastructure. In other words, they are not just embracing clouds. They are building smarter clouds.
As the platform for systems that are designed for big data and tuned for specific tasks, smarter clouds offer exciting opportunities to improve the way organizations are run, how they ensure security and how they unleash innovation and spawn new services. Which is one reason smarter computing is doing more than improving efficiency—it's helping change the way our world actually works.
Let's build a smarter planet.
Some behind-the-scenes conversations with IBMers about cloud computing
Episode 1: IBM's unique advantage
Identifying the specific economic drivers of cloud computing in today's business environment.
Episode 2: Transitioning to cloud
Cloud managers discuss IBM's unique capabilities to provide a bridge from existing IT models to cloud computing.
Episode 3: Behind IBM Smart Business development & test
Addressing development and test team needs, and driving ever-greater cloud functionality with IBM's powerful hardware.
Episode 4: The changing role of system administrator
Cloud's streamlined administrative capabilities mean time savings and greater efficiency.
Episode 5: An enterprise viewpoint
Why IBM is uniquely qualified to deliver cost-effective cloud solutions to the enterprise.
Episode 6: Meeting tomorrow's IT challenges
Meeting IT delivery needs in a world of shrinking IT budgets and unprecedented data creation.
The benefits of cloud computing—accessing your data and applications stored on remote hardware by way of the Internet instead of keeping it all in your local workstation—still requires a leap of logic for many. But now that a workstation can go anywhere as a smartphone, a stripped-down netbook, or even an e-book reader, it's practically a virtual desktop operating in conjunction with a virtual server anyway. If the user can be anywhere, so can the source for data and applications.
The cloud equation adds in the flexibility to scale bandwidth up or down at will and the affordability of pay-as-you-go service, and subtracts energy-devouring hardware from your local environment. Factor in the IBM security and experience that go into each of its industry-leading global cloud computing centres and myriad enterprise private clouds. The result: an instrumented, interconnected, intelligent approach to smarter computing.
It all comes together in the IBM Smart Business cloud portfolio, which introduces the industry's first set of enterprise-directed cloud services and integrated products. It brings sophisticated automation technology and self-service to tasks as diverse as software development and testing, desktop and device management, and collaboration. Offerings include:
- IBM Smart Business standardized and private cloud services for secure, scalable software development and testing
- IBM Smart Business Desktop deployment options for virtual desktops
- IBM CloudBurst server with integrated storage, virtualization, networking and built-in service management systems
Plan, build and deliver with the IBM Cloud
With IBM's enterprise class cloud computing capabilities, you have the trusted partner to help you assess cloud readiness, develop adoption strategies and identify business entry points.
Plan
Cloud readiness assessment, ROI and migration strategies should be clear as you embark on the cloud journey. IBM offers a host of services such as IBM Strategy and Change Services for Cloud Adoption (US) and IBM Strategy and Design Services for Cloud Infrastructure (US) to help develop a cloud roadmap.
Build
Accelerate your application development and test efforts with the IBM Smart Business Development and Test Cloud. Realise cost savings and faster time to value in your private cloud environment. Provide anytime, anywhere access to applications, information and resources with the IBM Smart Desktop Cloud (US).
Deliver
Unleash employee potential with world-class social networking services and on-line collaboration tools including file sharing, web conferencing and instant messaging with IBM LotusLive™ Collaboration Suite. Then protect your valuable data with IBM Information Protection Services, a managed backup cloud service.
Get started
Learn more about the IBM Cloud.
The Benefits of Cloud Computing
A new era of responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency in IT service delivery
Where did the cloud computing paradigm come from? How can it help in reducing complexity and simplifying computing? What can it do for us today? And what does it have in common with beekeeping?
Watch this video for a whimsical look at the
history of cloud computing