Product architecture

IBM® Cloud Orchestrator is a comprehensive product that integrates the capabilities of several other IBM solutions.

IBM Cloud Orchestrator provides seamless integration of private and public cloud environments. IBM Cloud Orchestrator is the ideal solution for IT organizations that want to implement a hybrid cloud delivery model. It automates the complete delivery of IT services on private cloud environments, and it enables the exploitation of the same services on resources running on public clouds such as Amazon EC2 or IBM SoftLayer, by using the Public Cloud Gateway component, or such as Microsoft Azure.

The main components of IBM Cloud Orchestrator are the process engine and the corresponding modeling user interface, which is used to create processes. For this purpose, IBM Cloud Orchestrator uses the capabilities of IBM Business Process Manager. It also integrates other domain-specific components that are responsible for such functions as monitoring, metering, and accounting. IBM Cloud Orchestrator bundles all these products and components and provides processes that are required to implement the domain-specific functions.

High-level overview of the product architecture presenting all the components of IBM Cloud Orchestrator

The following are the descriptions of the role each major component plays in IBM Cloud Orchestrator:

Infrastructure-as-a-Service: The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) component is responsible for managing access to compute, storage, and networking resources in the virtual environment. All requests to provision services across these services are performed by this component. The IaaS component is delivered by using OpenStack, a leading open source, community-driven project for highly scalable, highly resilient cloud infrastructure management. IBM is one of the Platinum Members of the OpenStack Foundation.
Software Stacks: While not a specific component itself, Software Stacks represent the concept that when one or more virtual systems are deployed, it is also possible to specify multiple software packages to be deployed upon first boot of those systems. It can be done by starting simple installation scripts, but also other strong tools can be used such as Chef recipes and cookbooks for automated installation and configuration.
Workflow Orchestration: The Workflow Orchestration component provides a graphical editor that allows the user to easily customize and extend the procedures that are followed when a user request is initiated. In addition, it also provides the facilities to customize the self-service catalog so that users have access to various service request types that they can access. This component is delivered by embedding IBM's award-winning Business Process Manager technology along with a number of pre-built automation toolkits that make it possible to integrate workflow automation with the cloud platform and its other components. The graphical designer is highly flexible, providing many integration techniques ranging from invocation of simple scripts and calling web services to starting more sophisticated programs such as those written in Java™.
IBM Cloud Orchestrator Catalog: The IBM Cloud Orchestrator Catalog is a publicly accessible website where various forms of automation can be downloaded and used within IBM Cloud Orchestrator. It includes references to supported automation communities such as Chef, and various pre-built Workflow Orchestration routines, packages, and toolkits. It is designed to "ship when ready", meaning that new automation can become available at any time, regardless of IBM Cloud Orchestrator release schedules.
Public Cloud Gateway: The Public Cloud Gateway component is responsible for the integration with public clouds enabling the complete IT services delivery on resources running on public clouds such as Amazon EC2 or IBM SoftLayer.
Service Management: This box represents optional extra management functions that are included in IBM Cloud Orchestrator Enterprise Edition. It also highlights the ability to integrate through Workflow Orchestration other management tools and disciplines that might be important within your environment.
Development tools: This box represents the ability to integrate developer tools from IBM Rational Team Concert and a set of plug-ins within Cloud Continuous Delivery such as that a user can automate a "continuous delivery pipeline" from check-in of code, through build, deployment, test, and promotion. Those tools are not provided within IBM Cloud Orchestrator, but more information about them can be found on ibm.com®.