IBM Advances Hybrid Cloud Capabilities; Unveils Bluemix Local

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today accelerated its hybrid cloud capabilities by unveiling a cloud platform that allows enterprises to quickly build apps in a secure manner and deploy them across public, private and on-premises environments.  

Enterprises today are spending more time managing their infrastructure and moving data and apps between disparate cloud environments, forced to sacrifice on either security or speed. The delivery of Bluemix Local brings the speed and ease of app development on Bluemix behind a client's firewall. With its write once, run anywhere feature, enterprises can now swiftly build and run apps in the cloud that stitch together existing systems and connect data and API's into a single environment, while keeping apps current across all platforms. Today's news continues to expand the Bluemix platform, which has been built on an open architecture to provide increased flexibility for enterprises.

This is especially significant for organizations in regulated industries such as banking, healthcare and financial services, who must follow strict mandates and internal policies for how security, compliance and sensitive customer data is handled outside of their corporate network.  For most organizations, a hybrid cloud approach is the preferred model for connecting these worlds in a seamless way.  ESG research expects that hybrid cloud adoption in enterprises will rise to over 50 percent by 2017.¹

For instance, CaixaBank, the largest financial institution in Spain with the broadest customer base of 13.8 million customers, over 5,300 branches and nearly 10,000 ATMs, has chosen Bluemix Local to support business applications migrating from its local, and private, Cloud Foundry-based Platform as a Service. 

New capabilities of Bluemix Local include:

• Relay technology, created by IBM cloud development teams, that ensures all cloud environments remain current. Relay can instantly sync updates across environments, allowing enterprises to experience the same cloud content and visibility, regardless of location.
  
• Access to IBM's open-standards-based syndicated catalog of more than 120 services that combines IBM and third-party services so enterprises can construct and extend apps and services. With a private catalog and API Management services, enterprise clients can create, publish, manage and monetize their own APIs.
  
• A single admin console that puts enterprises in control of their entire cloud platform with visibility through a single dashboard of their public, private and on-premises Bluemix environments, including real-time releases, updates and patches.

Clients can also sync data across geographies using IBM's global network of Cloud Data Centers that are operated throughout the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe. 

Using the syndicated catalog through Bluemix Local, a wealth manager at a financial services organization could leverage the Watson Personality Insights API to better understand and service their customer. By analyzing communication between the wealth manager and the customer, a company could build an individual personality index to determine if that person is a risk-taker or more cautious in their investment approach. By narrowing down these personality traits, financial services organizations can provide more insightful recommendations, resulting in highly satisfied customers. 

"With the delivery of Bluemix Local, IBM now has the broadest spectrum of hybrid cloud capability in the industry," said Steve Robinson, general manager, Cloud Platform Services, IBM. "Developers are using APIs and building data-intensive apps at an explosive rate, but many, particularly those in heavily regulated industries, want the choice to keep sensitive workloads within their own data center. Clients want options. Now, we are empowering developers to build, deploy and run next-generation apps in the environment they need, with the flexibility to shift across hybrid clouds in a simple click."

IBM launched Bluemix with a $1 billion investment in 2014, growing rapidly to become the largest Cloud Foundry deployment in the world. The open-standards-based Bluemix catalog includes over 120 tools and services spanning categories of big data, mobile, Watson, analytics, integration, DevOps, security and Internet of Things. IBM Bluemix was recently shown to the "developers choice" of PaaS and is growing 10-times faster than the overall PaaS market according to research firm ESG.

Find more information on Bluemix Local, visit: ibm.com/bluemix/hybrid.  

Contact: Faye Abloeser, 908-770-0762, abloeser@us.ibm.com  

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1. ESG: Platform-as-a-Service Usage and Satisfaction Study, April 2015. http://www.esg-global.com/research-reports/platform-as-a-service-usage-and-satisfaction-study/  

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SOURCE IBM