IBM Launches Workload Deployer Private-Cloud Appliance

As part of a new cloud-computing push, IBM announced its new Workload Deployer appliance for creating private-cloud environments.

At an IBM Cloud Forum event in San Francisco, Big Blue announced several new cloud-computing initiatives, including new workload-deployment technology.

The new IBM Workload Deployer, announced April 7, is a hardware appliance that provides access to IBM middleware virtual images and patterns to easily, quickly and repeatedly create application environments that can be securely deployed and managed in a private cloud. The IBM Workload Deployer was previously known as WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance.

IBM officials claim the company led the market with the first private-cloud development platform, the IBM WebSphere CloudBurst appliance, which was designed to deploy business applications based on IBM middleware into the cloud. The IBM Workload Deployer extends this experience to production environments with new workload-management and elastic runtime capabilities.

IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manage millions of cloud-based transactions every day-in areas as diverse as banking, communications, health care and government-and securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services, the company said.  

The IBM Workload Deployer has new features and functions that enhance its cost-saving benefits for clients and make deployment of on-premise cloud environments even easier, IBM said. IBM will demonstrate the new offering for more than 8,000 customers and partners during the IBM Impact 2011 show in Las Vegas April 10 to 15.

IBM officials said the company now provides a single platform to enable users to provision all the middleware and application components they need to run Web workloads in the cloud across multiple systems or hypervisors in a simple and repeatable fashion. This will allow businesses to respond quickly to new requests for services from their customers.

OneTree Solutions is one of the first companies to take advantage of the offering and is working with IBM on a new solution that allows OneTree customers to realize the most profitable pricing for customized quote preparation and deal negotiation.

The solution, OT ReMax, combines advanced pricing analytics and optimization capabilities with embedded IBM technologies. It is able to provide profitable pricing recommendations to sales agents, customized for each offer and contract; allowing them to make better-informed pricing decisions and maximize revenues.

"By deploying OT ReMax utilizing IBM cloud technology, OneTree is able to simultaneously tackle several challenges; to provide its revenue-maximization solution without requiring its customers to make any up-front investments on hardware or software; to extend the reach of its solution on a global scale; to reduce the time and effort of deployment to a minimum; and to provide unlimited scalability, which would be difficult with a traditional approach," Panos Konstantinidis, partner and co-founder of OneTree Solutions, said in a statement. "IBM cloud technology gives OneTree and its customers a powerful competitive advantage"

Another early partner, Alphinat, has been able to easily deploy its SmartGuide solution using IBM Workload Deployer. SmartGuide Designer will allow their customers to create and to render complex Web applications without writing a single line of code. It enables quick deployment of Enterprise Applications to the Cloud.

And Silvermoon Business Systems is yet another company using the Workload Deployer. They will deploy their LUNOS solution, an enterprise suite of insurance systems components, to the cloud using the IBM Workload Deployer. Based on early pilot testing, Silvermoon estimates that they will be able to achieve a 50 to 70 percent reduction in development and migration time leading to a significant cost savings for their customers.