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IBM announced it has simplified its cloud computing contracts to make it easier for customers to enter into cloud services agreements by creating a standard, two-page form to replace longer, more complex contracts that typically required long negotiations and reviews before a deal was signed.
Big Blue said its cloud competitors require customers to review and commit to more complex contracts that commonly are at least five times longer and also incorporate terms and conditions from other Websites.
“It’s ironic that cloud computing represents a faster and more innovative approach to doing business, yet lengthy and complex cloud business contracts from most vendors remain an obstacle,” said Neil Abrams, IBM vice president and assistant general counsel, in a statement. “By dramatically simplifying and accelerating how clients contract for cloud services, IBM is making it easier and faster for companies to reap the benefits of cloud.”
For its efforts, IBM received the 2014 Innovation Award for Operational Improvement from the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) for transforming its cloud computing contract process.
IBM achieved its operational improvement over the course of two months and deployed it globally for all of the company’s cloud offerings. IBM’s cloud services business and clients quickly benefited from the simplified cloud contracting procedure. Indeed, IBM said customers have embraced the new cloud services agreement, which is easy to navigate and understand, dramatically reducing the time required to close a deal and for clients to enjoy the benefits of cloud.
Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives. Big Blue holds more than 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. And the company processes more than 5.5 million client transactions daily through IBM’s public cloud.
IBM also announced that German startup Preveniomed has chosen IBM Cloud to securely store and process patient data and health records on airplane pilots from around the world.
Preveniomed offers services and advice for aviation medicine and has doctors on staff who examine patients for fitness to fly. The startup recently decided to store its patients’ encrypted data and launch its patient-data monitoring applications on cloud infrastructure from SoftLayer. By integrating its patent data with Web-based applications hosted on the IBM Cloud, doctors at Preveniomed are able to reliably access it from anywhere knowing that it is secure.
Preveniomed worked with IBM business partner eperi to migrate to the IBM Cloud. eperi, which offers a Gateway for Databases application that is available in the IBM Cloud marketplace—encrypted all of Preveniomed’s patients’ data to comply with all of the requirements of the German Medical Council (BÄK) and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV).
“We opted for IBM and eperi as our IT partners because it allows us to protect our patients’ data from outages with cloud infrastructure that is always available and accessible from anywhere,” said Dr. Andreas Adrian, physician and founder of Preveniomed. “Being in the very sensitive healthcare business one of the compelling reasons for the SoftLayer solution was the data protection we achieved by using the eperi encryption technology.”
In addition, IBM announced that it is working with Diabetizer, a German -based health care technology company, to leverage IBM’s Bluemix platform as a service to build and deploy a cloud-based application that improves care for diabetes patients around the world. The app enables diabetes patients to instantly access and aggregate their health data from multiple devices anywhere in the world, as well as apply analytics to control their blood sugar at precisely accurate levels.
Diabetizer’s app enables patients to aggregate blood sugar, nutritional and health data from multiple input sources such as smartphones and Web apps into one, centralized mobile portal accessible from anywhere in the world. Users also can tap into the Internet of things to directly integrate biometric data from wearable devices, analyzing physical activity along with blood sugar levels to gain a more holistic view of a diabetic’s overall health.
“Cloud technology has given us the flexibility and power we need to build an app that combines patients’ most important records into one, easily usable portal,” said Robin Hrassnigg, Diabetizer’s founder and managing director, in a statement. “Combining this centralized data with powerful analytics, we’re giving the millions of diabetes sufferers around the world the opportunity for greater mobility, more accurate treatment and more freedom from constant calculations and data logging.”
“Diabetizer, one of the first Bluemix customers in the German-speaking region, is a perfect example of how young companies can take their business ideas forward with a scalable, flexible, global cloud infrastructure,” said Sandy Carter, general manager of ecosystem development at IBM. “Using the cloud to quickly build and bring to market solutions such as the myDIABETIZER app brings a new level of agility to the way we develop—allowing us to build apps which can help alleviate some of our most pressing health issues today.”