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IBM announced its new IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack, which provides open-standards-based cloud management with support for the full IBM server portfolio while it increases integration with the OpenStack cloud platform.
IBM, which announced the new offering at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta, is expanding its support of open technologies by providing advanced OpenStack integration and cloud virtualization and management capabilities across the company’s server portfolio.
IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack provides support for the latest OpenStack release, Icehouse, and full access to the core OpenStack API set to help clients ensure application portability and avoid vendor lock-in. It also extends cloud management support to System z, in addition to Power Systems, PureFlex/Flex Systems, System x or any other x86 environment, IBM said. The new offering also provides support for IBM z/VM on System z, and PowerVC for PowerVM on Power Systems designed to add more scalability and security to Linux environments.
IBM noted that as enterprises increasingly migrate to software-defined environments, automating hybrid cloud infrastructure across multiple platforms through open technologies becomes essential. Open technologies can make it easier for businesses to adopt a cloud model and integrate it with their existing IT infrastructure and applications to meet their evolving business needs.
Built on the foundation of IBM SmartCloud Entry, IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack offers a modular design that enables rapid innovation, vendor interoperability and faster time-to-value. It can deliver improved private cloud and service provider solutions with features like security, automation, usage-tracking metering and multi-architecture management. The technology can be accessed at OpenStack Marketplace, an online resource where organizations wanting to build or use OpenStack clouds can easily discover and compare products and services that best meet their business requirements.
IBM also announced its Cloud Manager with OpenStack is available as a bundled offering with the new IBM Power Systems servers announced last month. Called the IBM Power Systems Solution Edition for Scale Out Cloud, the offering combines a one- or two-socket system running Linux built on IBM’s latest POWER8 processor technology with new PowerKVM hypervisor, and OpenStack cloud management tools and APIs. The combination allows open infrastructures to scale out intelligently, with less hardware, power and cooling requirements, and better economics leveraging more than twice the bandwidth from previous generations. This is also an advantage for cloud services that demand exceptional compute power and memory bandwidth for big data and analytics.
IBM also announced it is beta-testing a dynamic, hybrid cloud technology on the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack platform. Workloads requiring additional infrastructure resources can expand from an on-premise cloud to remote infrastructure on SoftLayer to meet resource demands. This allows IBM clients and business partners to perform self-service provisioning of IT services across multiple environments with an easy-to-use interface.
“IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack provides the openness and flexibility to increase a business’ ability to capitalize on opportunities by quickly delivering new cloud services,” Jane Munn, IBM vice president and business line executive for cloud, said in a statement. “In addition, open community development facilitates vendor interoperability, allowing IBM clients and businesses partners to adapt their cloud assets in response to changing business needs.”
IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack is designed to help ensure that mission-critical applications running in the cloud are managed effectively. Clients—including Hubei RCCB, managed services provider Zetark, SAP integrator and IT hosting company AGENTIL, and the University of San Francisco—have all adopted IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack for their cloud development and deployment strategies.
“We feel very confident in the road map for IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack and IBM Power Systems and what it promises in the coming years,” Lei Zhi, IT manager for Hubei RCCB, said in a statement. “With IBM’s support, we are confident that this cloud solution will provide the rapid deployment and ease of management we require for our test environment, both now and in years to come.”
IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack is part of a family of offerings that clients and service providers can use to address the challenges of cloud operation. IBM Cloud Orchestrator offers additional features to ease the coordination of complex tasks, including business process work flows and application patterns. IBM Platform Resource Scheduler provides dynamic resource management via intelligent resource pooling and policy-based infrastructure resource management.