IBM Strives To Expand Cloud Solutions & Mainframe Offerings To Meet Changing Customer Needs

March 2014

The embattled IT behemoth, International Business Machines Corp (IBM) has been seen pulling out all stops to align itself to the growing demand for cloud based technology solutions from its customers. Two recent moves scripted by its CEO Virginia M. Rometty showcase the urgency with which the company is working towards this goal.

Beefing Up Its Cloud Offerings

The 1st is the December 19 announcement by IBM that it is acquiring tech start-up firm Aspera which has been a pioneer in developing internet based protocol designed to move huge chunks of data in various formats through the world wide web. The Aspera developed protocol code named “fasp” is designed to truck around gigabyte sized files quickly, from one data location to another, be it within the intranet or between servers and data storage devices located in public or private cloud. IBM has been smarting under the pressure that the market has been exerting on its stock, as it tries to beef up its cloud offerings to offset the drop in its traditional business. This buyout, once completed is expected to hugely augment IBM’s cloud competing solution bucket.

Augmenting Its Mainframe Offerings

The second move by the developers of the Blue Stack is the launch of a new generation mainframe branded as IBM zEnterprise® System. This new mainframe is being positioned as a platform which is fully equipped to handle “transaction processing and data consolidation” needs of enterprise wide applications that companies are depending on more and more to run their business critical operations. The main frame is being positioned as a one stop shop for all data crunching and data mining needs of today’s enterprise as the mainframe is designed to help companies derive insights into their business in real time by leveraging BI tools. The mainframe is also being touted as an easy to integrate data platform since the “zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX) allows integration of IBM POWER7 and System x blades.”