Description
IBM's 2015 annual customer conference, hosted in Las Vegas from February 22–26, was a massive event combining multiple conferences of yesteryear. The 2014 Pulse, Impact, and Innovate conferences were merged as "IBM InterConnect," with more than 20,000 people attending the newly minted event.
IMPACT BRIEF | 1 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Abstract
IBM’s 2015 annual customer conference, hosted in Las Vegas from February 22–26, was a massive
event combining multiple conferences of yesteryear. Te 2014 Pulse, Impact, and Innovate conferences
were merged as “IBM InterConnect,” with more than 20,000 people attending the newly minted event.
Tracks covered today’s hottest technology trends, including big data/analytics, smarter process,
application infrastructure, development, mobile, integration, and cloud. However, it was readily
apparent that “the cloud” was the real star of the show and the centerpiece of IBM’s new go-to-market
story. IBM has built the hooks necessary to support each of these hot technology trends—and future
trends that are yet to be defned—within the context of a new hybrid cloud architecture and portfolio.
With a signifcant portion of IBM’s software solutions now available in both on-premise and cloud-
hosted form factors, IBM’s PureSystems line has followed suit. Te line has undergone an evolution
from its initial systems-centric roots and is now also delivered as a service and as software, hosted on
platforms of the customer’s choice.
Tis ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) impact brief discusses IBM’s hybrid
cloud strategy at a high level with particular focus on IBM’s latest announcements related to the
PureApplication portfolio.
Background and Context: PureApplication and Patterns
EMA research reveals that more than half of today’s companies have already deployed production
hybrid cloud services (defned by EMA analysts as services spanning on-premise and cloud OR cloud-
to-cloud deployments). It also reveals that “incorporating new technologies such as mobile and cloud”
into existing IT ecosystems is the number one challenge voiced by IT professionals at every level.
Today’s wide variety of cloud options forces a host of decisions. Cost versus service quality tradeofs, skills
acquisition and development issues, and enterprise architecture questions are all part of the equation.
Cloud-related decisions must also be weighed against the fact that cloud services must be capable of
coexisting with back- and front-end production systems. An often overlooked aspect of public cloud
discussions is the fact that, in most cases, cloud systems don’t operate as stand-alone silos. Virtually all
do, or eventually will, interact with existing on-premise or third-party systems.
Openness, interoperability, and standards support are hallmarks of the IBM PureApplication
portfolio. It consists of three solution types, all supporting production-grade quality of service (QoS).
PureApplication system, service, and software support virtually every organizational style, software
architecture, and cloud entry point. Te three PureApplication “favors” difer only in terms of where
they are hosted and the levels of support provided by IBM and its partners.
Via patterns, these systems can very quickly be confgured based on expertise and best practices from
industry and organizational past experience. Patterns are essentially reusable assets tailored to a particular
confguration, application, or workload. Examples include the following:
IBM Doubles Down on Hybrid Cloud at IBM
InterConnect 2015: PureApplication Enterprise-
Grade System, Service, and Software Options
IMPACT BRIEF | 2 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
• Te IBM PureApplication with DB2 pattern supports fast deployment of high-end database
processing for enterprise or business intelligence (BI) applications.
• At InterConnect, insurance industry consultants discussed the benefts of a life insurance application
pattern that “increased actuarial innovation, fexibility, and cost savings while introducing a modern
architecture.”
IBM customers confrm that by using patterns and pre-confgurations supporting management,
networking, and storage, they have been able to deploy complex, integrated workloads in hours
versus months.
In addition, self-managing automation, self-learning, and advanced analytics contribute to a “smart”
system, which reduces manual tuning and scheduled downtime requirements. Te ultimate goal is
to free up IT personnel and shift resources from infrastructure management to innovative, business-
relevant products and services.
IBM PureApplication: Pre-loaded and Confgured to Deliver
Production-Grade Service
Defned by IBM as a “hybrid cloud application platform for cloud-enabling applications and middleware
with enterprise-grade qualities of service,” the PureApplication solutions can reduce the uncertainties
associated with extending application ecosystems to cloud, mobile, and Internets of Tings (IoT).
Te three oferings are virtually identical except that they are designed for a variety of hosting options
and include varying levels of vendor support (see Figure 1). Regardless of form factor, they feature an
open, integrated, and self-managing design that can be centrally administered across compute, storage,
and networking. Also preinstalled and delivered “out of the box” are integration software and intelligent
agents which simplify management with automated fault diagnostics. Workloads can be seamlessly
deployed, moved, and elastically extended across on- and of-premise with no changes, and existing
licenses and IBM support can be rolled over to PureApplication deployments.
PureApplication platforms are pre-optimized for the following:
• Automated elasticity
• Multisite deployment
• High availability and disaster recovery
• Monitoring
• License management
• Intelligent placement
• Centralized logging
• Security.
System, Software, or Service?
PureApplication System is a complete, pre-integrated hardware/software system delivered on POWER
or x86-based hardware. IBM cites the fact that it can be rolled into the data center and up and running
within four hours. Delivered in confgurations supporting small, medium, or large workloads, the
system requires little setup other than “plugging in four cables” and applying patterns.
At the InterConnect event, IBM Enterprise and Systems Integrator customers were lavish with their
praise.
• Conficting priorities competing for resources drove a systems integrator to seek better alternatives
for completing customer projects. PureApplication System helped them to deliver fully operable
applications very quickly, reducing deployment times from eight weeks to eight hours.
IMPACT BRIEF | 3 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
• Customer quotes
? “It’s easy to use and particularly efective for systems of engagement that integrate to back-end
systems.”
? “It’s not like we just stood up an application— it’s completely integrated with the data center.”
? “It’s easy to export a complete set of environments and host them anywhere.”
? “[It has] complete failover and full data center integration.”
? “PureApplication System is an ideal platform for extending legacy systems with new types of
applications.”
PureApplication Software includes all the benefts of PureApplication System, but with hosting on
the customer’s own hardware. As Figure 1 shows, the customer’s IT organization handles setup, pattern
deployment, and management. Support for monitoring, caching, and load balancing, etc. are included
with the product package.
Tis is an ideal confguration for customers seeking the portability and rapid delivery benefts of
PureApplication while requiring that systems remain on premises. It is also a good option for IT
organizations with strong technical teams capable of setting up and supporting an internal cloud
delivery system. Once set up, features are identical to those of PureApplication Systems. Tis ensures
workload portability as hosting requirements change over time.
PureApplication Service ofers isolated enterprise-grade applications set up and managed by IBM
and hosted on SoftLayer clouds worldwide. It delivers 99.9% uptime with higher levels available via
clustering. One important feature cited by customers is the fact that they did not have to move data
into the cloud to use SoftLayer-hosted services.
Figure 1. PureApplication System, Service, and Software Support Responsibilities
IMPACT BRIEF | 4 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
What’s New?
PureApplication System, the initial ofering in this portfolio, was introduced in 2012. PureApplication
Service was launched in 2014, and PureApplication Software is a new ofering announced at Interconnect
2015. Multiple related announcements were made at the event as well:
• Support for open standards and tools such as Chef and Docker
? Open standards and particularly confguration and container based technologies such as Chef
and Docker ensure portability and repeatability of very complex software deployments, regardless
of hosting platform or location.
• New capabilities supporting enterprise-grade delivery
? Faster connectivity between hybrid environments
? Secure, fne-grained access control to on-premise data by of-premise applications
? Of-premise backup and restore for improved business continuity
? Out-of-the-box Denial of Service (DoS) detection for improved security.
• Enhanced support for pattern-driven approach delivers signifcant value-add.
? Patterns reduce time and skill levels necessary to deploy complex workloads.
? Pattern engine helps simplify license tracking across multi-domain, hybrid services.
? Pattern engine is also capable of capturing enterprise applications as blueprints, enabling IT
organizations to create and reuse their own company-specifc patterns.
• Improved developer productivity
? Deploy and manage Docker containers with patterns
? Up to 10X faster deployment, scaling, and upgrades
? Seamless portability across clouds
? Access to 14,000+ pre-built applications
? Enhanced Chef support to integrate and leverage Chef investments.
• Improved Operations productivity
? Pre-provisioned management, networking, storage, load balancing, etc.
• Flexible deployment options
? New support for “bring your own hardware” to write applications once, deploy anywhere
? Docker containers can run:
? On an of-premise cloud.
? On a pre-integrated system.
? On customer hardware.
IMPACT BRIEF | 5 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
EMA Perspective
Production use of public cloud services is skyrocketing, and IBM is clearly positioning to take full
advantage of this trend. However, the broader trend of hybrid cloud is one that is overlooked by many
competing vendors. Virtually every public cloud customer very quickly discovers that it’s not enough
simply to deliver customer relationship management (CRM) via Salesforce or SugarCRM. Most fnd
that CRM must be integrated with online marketing applications or with “back-end” enterprise resource
planning (ERP) or fnancial systems. Te PureApplication portfolio, with its focus on pre-integration
and standards-based architectures, demonstrates IBM’s fundamental understanding of the importance
of the hybrid nature of virtually every cloud-delivered service.
With the PureApplication announcements, IBM has covered virtually all cloud bases. Already delivering
cloud hosting via SoftLayer and the majority of its software portfolio as both cloud and non-cloud form
factors, IBM is now upping the ante. PureApplication delivers a wealth of production-focused value-
adds, virtually none of which are duplicated by competing vendors. Customer testimonials confrm that
the PureApplication platforms, designed for cloud-enabling middleware and applications and focusing
on pattern-driven deployment, can reduce the time and efort necessary to deliver new software by
orders of magnitude.
No single product is the best option for every company. However, companies seeking to reduce the
uncertainties surrounding cloud delivery—and the uncertainties surrounding the architectural and
skills questions it entails—can fnd out more about the value proposition of the “Big Blue” cloud here:http://www.ibm.com/ibm/puresystems/us/en/pf_pureapplication.html.
About EMA
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst frm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum
of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices,
and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help EMA’s clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research,
analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or
blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 3047.032315
doc_739354508.pdf
IBM's 2015 annual customer conference, hosted in Las Vegas from February 22–26, was a massive event combining multiple conferences of yesteryear. The 2014 Pulse, Impact, and Innovate conferences were merged as "IBM InterConnect," with more than 20,000 people attending the newly minted event.
IMPACT BRIEF | 1 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Abstract
IBM’s 2015 annual customer conference, hosted in Las Vegas from February 22–26, was a massive
event combining multiple conferences of yesteryear. Te 2014 Pulse, Impact, and Innovate conferences
were merged as “IBM InterConnect,” with more than 20,000 people attending the newly minted event.
Tracks covered today’s hottest technology trends, including big data/analytics, smarter process,
application infrastructure, development, mobile, integration, and cloud. However, it was readily
apparent that “the cloud” was the real star of the show and the centerpiece of IBM’s new go-to-market
story. IBM has built the hooks necessary to support each of these hot technology trends—and future
trends that are yet to be defned—within the context of a new hybrid cloud architecture and portfolio.
With a signifcant portion of IBM’s software solutions now available in both on-premise and cloud-
hosted form factors, IBM’s PureSystems line has followed suit. Te line has undergone an evolution
from its initial systems-centric roots and is now also delivered as a service and as software, hosted on
platforms of the customer’s choice.
Tis ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) impact brief discusses IBM’s hybrid
cloud strategy at a high level with particular focus on IBM’s latest announcements related to the
PureApplication portfolio.
Background and Context: PureApplication and Patterns
EMA research reveals that more than half of today’s companies have already deployed production
hybrid cloud services (defned by EMA analysts as services spanning on-premise and cloud OR cloud-
to-cloud deployments). It also reveals that “incorporating new technologies such as mobile and cloud”
into existing IT ecosystems is the number one challenge voiced by IT professionals at every level.
Today’s wide variety of cloud options forces a host of decisions. Cost versus service quality tradeofs, skills
acquisition and development issues, and enterprise architecture questions are all part of the equation.
Cloud-related decisions must also be weighed against the fact that cloud services must be capable of
coexisting with back- and front-end production systems. An often overlooked aspect of public cloud
discussions is the fact that, in most cases, cloud systems don’t operate as stand-alone silos. Virtually all
do, or eventually will, interact with existing on-premise or third-party systems.
Openness, interoperability, and standards support are hallmarks of the IBM PureApplication
portfolio. It consists of three solution types, all supporting production-grade quality of service (QoS).
PureApplication system, service, and software support virtually every organizational style, software
architecture, and cloud entry point. Te three PureApplication “favors” difer only in terms of where
they are hosted and the levels of support provided by IBM and its partners.
Via patterns, these systems can very quickly be confgured based on expertise and best practices from
industry and organizational past experience. Patterns are essentially reusable assets tailored to a particular
confguration, application, or workload. Examples include the following:
IBM Doubles Down on Hybrid Cloud at IBM
InterConnect 2015: PureApplication Enterprise-
Grade System, Service, and Software Options
IMPACT BRIEF | 2 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
• Te IBM PureApplication with DB2 pattern supports fast deployment of high-end database
processing for enterprise or business intelligence (BI) applications.
• At InterConnect, insurance industry consultants discussed the benefts of a life insurance application
pattern that “increased actuarial innovation, fexibility, and cost savings while introducing a modern
architecture.”
IBM customers confrm that by using patterns and pre-confgurations supporting management,
networking, and storage, they have been able to deploy complex, integrated workloads in hours
versus months.
In addition, self-managing automation, self-learning, and advanced analytics contribute to a “smart”
system, which reduces manual tuning and scheduled downtime requirements. Te ultimate goal is
to free up IT personnel and shift resources from infrastructure management to innovative, business-
relevant products and services.
IBM PureApplication: Pre-loaded and Confgured to Deliver
Production-Grade Service
Defned by IBM as a “hybrid cloud application platform for cloud-enabling applications and middleware
with enterprise-grade qualities of service,” the PureApplication solutions can reduce the uncertainties
associated with extending application ecosystems to cloud, mobile, and Internets of Tings (IoT).
Te three oferings are virtually identical except that they are designed for a variety of hosting options
and include varying levels of vendor support (see Figure 1). Regardless of form factor, they feature an
open, integrated, and self-managing design that can be centrally administered across compute, storage,
and networking. Also preinstalled and delivered “out of the box” are integration software and intelligent
agents which simplify management with automated fault diagnostics. Workloads can be seamlessly
deployed, moved, and elastically extended across on- and of-premise with no changes, and existing
licenses and IBM support can be rolled over to PureApplication deployments.
PureApplication platforms are pre-optimized for the following:
• Automated elasticity
• Multisite deployment
• High availability and disaster recovery
• Monitoring
• License management
• Intelligent placement
• Centralized logging
• Security.
System, Software, or Service?
PureApplication System is a complete, pre-integrated hardware/software system delivered on POWER
or x86-based hardware. IBM cites the fact that it can be rolled into the data center and up and running
within four hours. Delivered in confgurations supporting small, medium, or large workloads, the
system requires little setup other than “plugging in four cables” and applying patterns.
At the InterConnect event, IBM Enterprise and Systems Integrator customers were lavish with their
praise.
• Conficting priorities competing for resources drove a systems integrator to seek better alternatives
for completing customer projects. PureApplication System helped them to deliver fully operable
applications very quickly, reducing deployment times from eight weeks to eight hours.
IMPACT BRIEF | 3 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
• Customer quotes
? “It’s easy to use and particularly efective for systems of engagement that integrate to back-end
systems.”
? “It’s not like we just stood up an application— it’s completely integrated with the data center.”
? “It’s easy to export a complete set of environments and host them anywhere.”
? “[It has] complete failover and full data center integration.”
? “PureApplication System is an ideal platform for extending legacy systems with new types of
applications.”
PureApplication Software includes all the benefts of PureApplication System, but with hosting on
the customer’s own hardware. As Figure 1 shows, the customer’s IT organization handles setup, pattern
deployment, and management. Support for monitoring, caching, and load balancing, etc. are included
with the product package.
Tis is an ideal confguration for customers seeking the portability and rapid delivery benefts of
PureApplication while requiring that systems remain on premises. It is also a good option for IT
organizations with strong technical teams capable of setting up and supporting an internal cloud
delivery system. Once set up, features are identical to those of PureApplication Systems. Tis ensures
workload portability as hosting requirements change over time.
PureApplication Service ofers isolated enterprise-grade applications set up and managed by IBM
and hosted on SoftLayer clouds worldwide. It delivers 99.9% uptime with higher levels available via
clustering. One important feature cited by customers is the fact that they did not have to move data
into the cloud to use SoftLayer-hosted services.
Figure 1. PureApplication System, Service, and Software Support Responsibilities
IMPACT BRIEF | 4 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
What’s New?
PureApplication System, the initial ofering in this portfolio, was introduced in 2012. PureApplication
Service was launched in 2014, and PureApplication Software is a new ofering announced at Interconnect
2015. Multiple related announcements were made at the event as well:
• Support for open standards and tools such as Chef and Docker
? Open standards and particularly confguration and container based technologies such as Chef
and Docker ensure portability and repeatability of very complex software deployments, regardless
of hosting platform or location.
• New capabilities supporting enterprise-grade delivery
? Faster connectivity between hybrid environments
? Secure, fne-grained access control to on-premise data by of-premise applications
? Of-premise backup and restore for improved business continuity
? Out-of-the-box Denial of Service (DoS) detection for improved security.
• Enhanced support for pattern-driven approach delivers signifcant value-add.
? Patterns reduce time and skill levels necessary to deploy complex workloads.
? Pattern engine helps simplify license tracking across multi-domain, hybrid services.
? Pattern engine is also capable of capturing enterprise applications as blueprints, enabling IT
organizations to create and reuse their own company-specifc patterns.
• Improved developer productivity
? Deploy and manage Docker containers with patterns
? Up to 10X faster deployment, scaling, and upgrades
? Seamless portability across clouds
? Access to 14,000+ pre-built applications
? Enhanced Chef support to integrate and leverage Chef investments.
• Improved Operations productivity
? Pre-provisioned management, networking, storage, load balancing, etc.
• Flexible deployment options
? New support for “bring your own hardware” to write applications once, deploy anywhere
? Docker containers can run:
? On an of-premise cloud.
? On a pre-integrated system.
? On customer hardware.
IMPACT BRIEF | 5 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
EMA Perspective
Production use of public cloud services is skyrocketing, and IBM is clearly positioning to take full
advantage of this trend. However, the broader trend of hybrid cloud is one that is overlooked by many
competing vendors. Virtually every public cloud customer very quickly discovers that it’s not enough
simply to deliver customer relationship management (CRM) via Salesforce or SugarCRM. Most fnd
that CRM must be integrated with online marketing applications or with “back-end” enterprise resource
planning (ERP) or fnancial systems. Te PureApplication portfolio, with its focus on pre-integration
and standards-based architectures, demonstrates IBM’s fundamental understanding of the importance
of the hybrid nature of virtually every cloud-delivered service.
With the PureApplication announcements, IBM has covered virtually all cloud bases. Already delivering
cloud hosting via SoftLayer and the majority of its software portfolio as both cloud and non-cloud form
factors, IBM is now upping the ante. PureApplication delivers a wealth of production-focused value-
adds, virtually none of which are duplicated by competing vendors. Customer testimonials confrm that
the PureApplication platforms, designed for cloud-enabling middleware and applications and focusing
on pattern-driven deployment, can reduce the time and efort necessary to deliver new software by
orders of magnitude.
No single product is the best option for every company. However, companies seeking to reduce the
uncertainties surrounding cloud delivery—and the uncertainties surrounding the architectural and
skills questions it entails—can fnd out more about the value proposition of the “Big Blue” cloud here:http://www.ibm.com/ibm/puresystems/us/en/pf_pureapplication.html.
About EMA
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst frm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum
of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices,
and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help EMA’s clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research,
analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or
blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 3047.032315
doc_739354508.pdf