With a new hardware appliance and new version of WebSphere Application Server, IBM is giving enterprises an easier way to bring their SOA investments into the cloud computing realm. WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance gives businesses a place to store SOA images and patterns that can then be brought into cloud environments. WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition is optimized to run in virtualized environments and comes preloaded with WebSphere CloudBurst. Both products also integrate with tools from IBM's Rational and Tivoli businesses.IBM wants to make it easier for
businesses to extend their SOA investments into the cloud.
IBM on April 30 rolled out a new hardware
appliance and a new virtualization-focused version of its WebSphere Application
Server that, together, give enterprises a smooth path for bringing their
service-oriented architecture work into private cloud environments.
The new hardware, WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance, stores and secures SOA
images and patterns created through the new WebSphere Application Server
Hypervisor Edition that will be brought into a cloud environment.
"The role [of the new offerings] is to make it very easy for our
customers to leverage private clouds based on WebSphere software," said
Kareem Yusuf, director for IBM WebSphere.
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standards battle may be brewing in the cloud computing space. Click here to read more.
WebSphere CloudBurst lets developers quickly and easily develop, test and
deploy applications, in large part by making it easier to create application
environments. It takes a lot of the time-consuming manual tasks out of the
equation, enabling users to set up the application environments in a matter of
minutes rather than hours or days, Yusuf said. Once completed, the various
computing resources used to create the test environment are then returned to
the pool of available resources.
In addition, WebSphere CloudBurst gives IT administrators greater access
control, managing individual and group access, IBM
said.
WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition is a version of WebSphere
AS software that is optimized to run in
virtualized hardware environments, including those using VMware technology. It
comes preloaded with WebSphere CloudBurst, Yusuf said.
The new offerings let customers take advantage of the principles behind
cloud computing, in particular simplicity, lack of set-up costs and low barrier
to entry, he said, adding that businesses are beginning to take a hard look at
the concept.
"Customers are asking the questions," Yusuf said. "Once they
step beyond the [cloud computing name] and talk about the principles behind it,
it starts to really make sense to them."
The new products also integrate with development and service management
tools from IBM's Rational and Tivoli
groups, he said.
Click here to read about IBM's LotusLive cloud computing lab in Hong Kong.
IBM's Rational Automation Framework for
WebSphere gives WebSphere CloudBurst users more than 400 automated tasks for
configuration and application deployment to WebSphere
AS environments, which makes the delivery
of test and deployment more efficient. In addition, Tivoli Automation Manager
automates processes used to develop and manage a cloud computing environment,
which helps enterprises more quickly build these environments and reduce IT
operational costs.
In other cloud-related moves, Yusuf also said IBM
is adding to the middleware products that users of Amazon.com's Amazon EC2
(Elastic Compute Cloud) public cloud environment can access.
IBM already offers WebSphere sMash and
Portal middleware on EC2. Now IBM is adding
Lotus Mashup and Forms to the mix, and later will offer WebSphere Application
Server, he said.
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