IBM introduced a set of "cloud" services and integrated products for the enterprise, designed to provide a reliable way to standardize increasingly complex IT functions. The IBM Smart Business cloud portfolio is meant to help clients take complex business processes and turn them into simple services. To accomplish this, Smart Business brings automation technology and self-service to specific digital tasks as diverse as software development and testing, desktop and device management, and collaboration.
The IBM Smart Business portfolio includes three "on-ramps," or ways to quickly deploy the cloud model: IBM Smart Business standardized services on the IBM Cloud; Smart Business private cloud services behind the firewall built by IBM (run by IBM or the client); and "CloudBurst" workload optimized systems, for clients who want to build to their own cloud with pre-integrated hardware and software. All three offerings include IBM's service management system-what IBM calls an "air traffic control system for IT"-that automates self-service, provisioning, monitoring as well as managing access and security for the cloud. The "cloud" consumption and delivery model standardizes IT and business services by type of work or function.
IBM will also offer three choices to deploy development and test services: IBM Smart Business Test Cloud-private cloud behind the client's firewall, built by IBM; Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud-IBM Smart Business Application Development & Test featuring Rational "Software Delivery Services" over IBM's secure, scalable cloud; and IBM CloudBurst: a family of pre-integrated set of hardware, storage, virtualization and networking, with a service management system built in.
IBM says it will also offer two deployment options to help clients virtualize desktops: IBM Smart Business Desktop Cloud-Cloud services delivered via the client's own infrastructure and data center; and IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM Cloud.
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