SCIENCE

IBM has expanded its CloudBurst family of pre-integrated cloud service delivery platforms by delivering the appliance on its POWER7-based hardware as well as separately offering the software to run on currently installed IBM and non-IBM systems.

Based on IBM's own corporate cloud installations and hosting engagements with thousands of clients, IBM CloudBurst appliances are workload-optimized solutions that integrate hardware, storage, networking, virtualization and its industry-leading service management software to create a private cloud environment. Compared with manually configuring a similar system, CloudBurst can cut the IT staff's labor in integrating systems, provisioning and managing storage up to 95 percent, according to IBM estimates.

"Automating IT resources to support new applications is critical because at most companies, a business user typically must wait weeks to get access to new IT resources due to the manual processes required to set up resources," said Lauren States, vice president, Cloud Computing for IBM Software Group. "IBM CloudBurst automates the manual processes to dramatically speed a business's time-to-market."

At the core of the new cloud offerings is IBM's latest autonomic computing advance, the new IBM Service Delivery Manager, which quickly deploys applications— automating the deployment, monitoring and management of cloud computing services for the IT staff.  

Announced today, Jordan University of Science and Technology will use CloudBurst as a private cloud environment as a platform for innovation supporting its new Centre of Excellence for Service Science Innovation at the university's campus in Irbid city, in northern Jordan. The new center will deliver teaching resources and technology expertise to students over a cloud computing infrastructure - the first system of its kind in the Middle East region.  For more information, see this news: Jordan University of Science and Technology Partners with IBM to Build New Cloud Computing Centre

IBM CloudBurst v2.1 on Power Systems provides a certified platform to run SAP applications.

"It will be of interest to our joint customers, including hosting providers, for building their enterprise cloud," said Kaj van de Loo, senior vice president, Technology Strategy, SAP.  "It will be of significant value that the end-to-end cloud solution and support will come from a single vendor, thereby lowering risk and time to market for deploying mission-critical applications on an enterprise cloud."

As an early adopter of IBM CloudBurst, the Municipal Software Park in DongYing, China is using IBM cloud technology to jump-start new economic development in the region and to support the city's expansion from industrial to services-based economy.  The cloud computing platform provides software test and development resources for dozens of top software startups and IT companies, and helps to host Internet-of-Things applications supporting e-government services.  IBM CloudBurst has helped the Municipal Software Park provide local businesses with an innovation platform to develop green IT, oil and gas, and digital city services.  As a result, the DongYing Municipal Software Park has been recognized as a leading innovation project in the country.

Here are the product details:  

• A new appliance IBM CloudBurst v2.1 on Power Systems that is based on IBM Power 750 servers.  The appliance can support from 160 up to 2,900 virtual machines while delivering greater security to keep the data in those applications separate. IBM estimates that private clouds built on Power systems can be up to 70 percent less expensive than stand alone x86 servers. The appliance will be available starting December 17, 2010.

• A new software offering IBM Service Delivery Manager based on a pre-integrated, software-only stack for x86 and Power systems.  The software can be ordered separately from the hardware thus providing clients the flexibility of using their current IBM or non-IBM hardware investments to deploy a cloud computing solution. It is deployed as a set of virtual images that automate the IT service deployment and provide resource monitoring, cost management and provisioning of services in the cloud.  IBM Service Delivery Manager for x86 systems is available today, and IBM Service Delivery Manager for Power systems will be available starting December 17, 2010.

• A new version of the IBM CloudBurst v2.1 on System x that is based on IBM HS22V blades equipped with 50 percent more memory and double the fibre channel bandwidth and now with the ability to run 30 or more virtual machines per blade.  It provides a workload optimized solution where customers can increase the processing power by adding the required compute nodes in a pay-as-you-go model.  The product is generally available today.