IBM talks up cloud BPM
November 2, 2011
IBM has laid out its ‘big data’ vision and the role that cloud, management and analytic technologies have to play in defining business processes in future.
The IT vendor recently unveiled a broad portfolio of new software that applies its business process management (BPM) expertise to the emerging hybrid cloud infrastructures end-user organisations…
It has also rolling out a new set of cloud computing technologies that it claims will significantly increase the use of cloud as a platform for more intelligent, automated business decisions.
Nancy Pearson, IBM Software Group WebSphere and application integration middleware vice president of global marketing, summarised the relevance of the number of cloud-computing technology related announcements it has made to its BPM roadmap.
"We established our SmartCloud Foundation earlier last month, which allows companies to move beyond just virtualisation to deploying BPM system quickly mainly in private clouds, along with a couple of Smart SaaS [software-as-a-service] offerings and SmartCloud app servers for example," she told Cloud Pro.
Private cloud workload-optimised appliances based on virtualised IBM System x and Power Systems lie at the heart of the SmartCloud portfolio, compromising a core set of private-cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) technologies and functions distilled from IBM client engagements and the millions of cloud-based transactions it manages every day.
The SmartCloud application servers and SaaS-based systems that Pearson also cited have been designed to provide greater visibility and integration between the applications that run on a cloud-based IT infrastructure and the key processes they support for managing a business.
Cloud, according to Rob High, IBM Software Group fellow and vice president, is also leading to the commoditisation of certain aspects of BPM that managed service providers are now also looking to capitalise on.
“The popularity of BPM in the cloud has more to do with reinventing a business in a way that it can become more agile,” High said.
“Cloud computing enables IT without boundaries, where BPM provides the framework, tools and means of collaboration to actually deliver on the ‘big data’ vision,” he added. “The goal is greater collaboration between business and IT, where the enablers are cloud and BPM technologies.”
Less than two weeks ago, the vendor also unveiled no fewer than 55 new and enhanced so-called Smart server, storage and analytic software products aimed at helping businesses make better use of the massive amounts of data they are collecting from more varied and diverse sources.