IBM Puts SoftLayer At New Cloud Unit’s Core
July 10, 2013
Grazed from Information Week. Author: Charles Babcock.
The OpenStack cloud community will find it has a major addition to its membership as IBM converts SoftLayer Technologies’ existing 13 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia into an implementation of the open source code cloud. And with that conversion, IBM will have the vehicle it needs to compete with Amazon Web Services for enterprise-level, cloud computing customers. SoftLayer, a seven-year-old, rapidly growing infrastructure-as-a-service provider, will give IBM greater IaaS core competence and extend its reach as enterprise users start to spend on cloud services.
SoftLayer CEO Lance Crosby welcomed the changes Monday, as IBM completed its acquisition, first announced June 4. Crosby said he and the rest of the SoftLayer executive staff will remain in place with multi-year contracts, along with their 700 employees, as they transition into becoming "a foundation unit" in IBM’s new Cloud Services division, which will consist of SoftLayer plus existing SmartCloud services. The division will be a unit of IBM Global Services…
Crosby said, "I don’t know yet," when asked what his title will be. He will report to Jim Comfort, general manager of Cloud Services. Part of the lack of concern about titles is the clear central role that SoftLayer will play within the newly created cloud unit. Dennis Quan, IBM VP of SmartCloud services, said the SoftLayer name will be preserved as a label of IBM’s core IaaS. The acquisition "will be a huge accelerator for our cloud business" as SoftLayer’s public facing services join IBM’s existing public and private SmartCloud services, Quan said in an interview. IBM already operates 10 Enterprise Plus cloud data centers offering IaaS around the world…
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