IBM is all set to expand its cloud service by putting into use its recently acquired Softlayer global cloud. As part of the expansion plan, the company has decided to move all of its software portfolio and platform services to the Softlayer cloud, where they all can be accessed as services under a common open architecture.
In an attempt to lure developers, IBM will soon launch a marketplace where it will be easier for developers to build and adjust applications in the cloud, said Danny Sabbah, chief technology officer of IBM’s Next Generation Platform.
The marketplace will offer a set of IBM software patterns for sets of applications and services that are commonly used in conjunction with one another for some predefined service. The marketplace will have over 2,000 products, as well as patterns and IBM services already in operation.
The New York-based company is also planning to invest more than $1 billion on cloud software development through 2015.
The company is heavily relying on Soft Layer, the cloud service company it acquired last year for $2 billion, to help reverse seven falling sales quarters.
Sabbah said: “This is crucial to expanding the potential audience and helping them get benefit and value from using SoftLayer.”
“This is not just about IBM’s conventional enterprise customers. There will be a lot of emerging companies in different areas.”
IBM will also launch Bluemix, an open-source enterprise software portfolio, to compete with rival existing platform-as-a-service products including Amazon’s AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku Inc.’s development platform and Red Hat Inc.’s OpenShift.
Beyond this the company will also be using the open-source Cloud Foundry framework, which is currently managed by Pivotal, to render its applications as services.
