(Page 2 of 2)
IBM's services are designed to recognize that, in some cases, it might be better to use a cloud maintained by IBM, while in other cases, it might be better to set up cloud-computing technology within a company's own data center. Whatever the situation, Quan says, one of the key lessons for cloud computing is to automate the process to a greater extent, so that it's easy, for example, for customers to move between working within IBM's public cloud and within their own private clouds.
Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at the market-research firm IDC, says that IBM is hoping to appeal to customers by making it simpler for them to get into cloud computing. So far, the adoption of cloud computing has been slow, he says, because the existing vendors have placed a heavy burden on companies, asking them to put together complicated architectures in order to connect the cloud to their existing services. "IBM's kind of gotten it and said, 'Okay, we have to put the pieces together,'" Gens says.
He says that in addition to providing simplified packaging for cloud services, it's significant that IBM is making an effort to give customers a clear sense of how cloud services can be used. The specificity that IBM is offering should make it easier to sell reluctant CEOs on the cloud, he says.
The strategy that IBM is using also plays to its strengths as a company with a long history of working with corporations. Like other traditional IT companies, "they're viewed as coming later to the cloud than Amazon and Salesforce.com, but the other side of the coin is they're coming with these capabilities that have an appeal to corporate CIOs," Gens says. "It's not that they're going to come in and take over the world, but it's going to be a more interesting competition now."
IBM security tool searches for and destroys malicious code in the cloud.
Cryptography solutions are far-off, but much can be done in the near term, says Whitfield Diffie.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
View full PDF >
Listen to story > 
Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed
briang1621
173 Comments
Great Choice IBM
IBM’s move into “cloud computing” aka “grid computing” is very smart and coincides well with their core capabilities in computer applications. The cloud computing market is very much in the infancy, there are only a small number of applications which have been adapted to the cloud, and even the most advance “web site hosting” still has much to go before the mass market adopts it.
As Moore of Crossing the Chasm explains, the need to simply the service offering, being in this case “cloud computing” to fully meet the need of a given market is vital for adoption to occur. IBM is betting on the adoption, which if it occurs and IBM is in a prime location and I gather could significantly boost their sales and revenues!
IBM’s current ad hock method of creating a custom applications for each cloud computing integration creates much waste, and worst of all does not build a core application which is re-sellable. Moving from that to a strategy where they are optimizing their services for a few given applications will help give those markets a solid solution needed to help promote adoption of cloud computing.
Now for a quick overview, cloud computing has several major advantages over the existing in-house or out-of-house servers. But first one must understand the one major trend guiding all IT services, which is the need to minimize IT’s cost while improving its reliability and application flexibility. Large IT departments associated with supporting a mid to large cap business are substantial cost on the company’s income sheets. For example, supermarkets are in the business of selling food, and they ideally would like to concentrate their IT services on optimizing their inventory management, and marketing applications, and avoid managing servers, backups, and IT connections.
In theses instances cloud computing shines because the infrastructure need to support this type of IT is virtual, i.e. there is no server configurations to discuss, no backup systems to manage, or connections to monitor. Further more, clouds offer the ability of rapid development and quick rollouts of software updates, not to mention the instance scalability and super reliability.
One major issue is that cloud computing applications need to be managed on a higher level. Rack Space a premier hosting company had to create a custom application to manage their cloud server. IBM now has a chance now to create a high level architecture (imaging a Cloud OS) that will allow system administrators to manage clouds effectively. Such an architecture would allow for quick porting of applications to a cloud, and management, not of the servers, but of cloud resources (like how much virtual RAM, and processing cycles are being used). Keep in mind, Microsoft made their fortune by creating a OS, and defended it well with the large entry barriers. A similar OS for cloud system could be a big cash cow if done right, and would have similar entry barriers because of the economy of scales, and customer captivity.
Cloud or Grid computing is clearly a disruptive innovation, but the key is getting it adopted. Imagining how the server market would change if even 30% of the customer shifted to hosting their IT needs over cloud systems.
Dr. Brian Glassman
Ph.D in Innovation Management from Purdue University
Brian.Glassman at Gmail
www.techrd.com
Reply