Cloud Computing: IBM SoftLayer vital to Big Blue’s software, hardware success

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Ed Scannell.

While SoftLayer was known in the cloud computing world as an up-and-comer the last few years, making top 10 lists as a company to watch, it struggled to get a seat at the table of Fortune 500 companies. But with IBM’s acquisition of the company last July, things changed. Not only does Lance Crosby, CEO of IBM SoftLayer, now have access to the clients and resources of the world’s second largest high-tech company, he is at the heart of what will drive much of IBM’s cloud software strategies involving all of Big Blue’s software and hardware groups.

Crosby recently sat down with SearchCloudComputing to talk about some technologies that will be revealed during the company’s Pulse conference this month, its competition with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and what life is like working for a company with deep pockets. How will the recent $1.2 billion investment in your data centers move IBM’s SoftLayer-based strategies forward?…

Lance Crosby: We can now accelerate the growth of SoftLayer by taking it to 40 sites by the end of this year and bring the entire portfolio to all markets worldwide. The exciting thing for me is bringing all these new and existing PaaS [Platform as a Service] and SaaS [Software as a Service] properties on to SoftLayer. At the [IBM Pulse 2014] event this month, we will be announcing the general availability of about two dozen of these properties that have been moved to the SoftLayer platform…

Read more from the source @ http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/2240214614/IBM-SoftLayer-vital-to-Big-Blues-software-hardware-success

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