IBM Expands Enterprise Cloud Services

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

IBM has established a global network of eight data centers to supply infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and is now offering SmartCloud Enterprise+ for running production workloads, including SAP applications. Unlike Amazon.com or Rackspace IaaS, IBM customers will find System Z mainframes and System P servers running AIX in the IBM cloud. That makes SmartCloud more compatible with the workloads of IBM customers. Most services are based strictly on standard Intel or AMD x86 servers, and it remains difficult to migrate Z series or P series workloads to x86 servers.

IBM’s IaaS data centers are located in Boulder, Colo.; Raleigh, N. C., Montpellier, France; Ehningen, Germany; Sydney, Australia; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Tokyo; and Toronto. It will add a ninth at mid- year in Barcelona, Spain. The company has previously offered IaaS in the U.S. and Europe. Offering greater geographic coverage often helps companies find a site in which to store their data. France, Germany and Canada all have regulations on what data may leave the country and what may not…

Tuesday’s announcement was the first time IBM said its Enterprise+ services, which offer individually tailored service level agreements, have been available in all major regions of the world. Unlike Amazon, IBM will let the customer choose to either manage his own workload or let IBM do it, similar to a managed hosting service, for an additional fee. It will also gear the service to the degree of availability and security desired by the customer. SmartCloud Enterprise+ can have service levels that guarantee availability for operating system-instance from 98.5% to 99.9%…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/ibm-expands-enterprise-cloud-services/240147288