Enterprise Meet IBM’s New Hybrid Cloud, Bluemix Local
Startups and SMBs have been able to take advantage of the cloud, and all of the speed and flexibility it offers, long before large enterprise companies due to strict security and privacy standards, as well as regulations for major industries like banking, healthcare, and financial services. The cloud has proven itself invaluable for businesses to be agile, yet finding a secure way to access applications while protecting the corporate firewall remained a major barrier to entry for many enterprise companies, until now. IBM has announced today a solution to this problem called Bluemix Local.
Bluemix Local is a new accelerated hybrid cloud that protects sensitive workloads seamlessly across public, private and on-premises environments utilizing a new patented technology called Relay. At the push of a button Relay can ensure data that flows through all cloud environments across all geographies is current and synced.
IBM’s expansion of Bluemix, its cloud platform-as-a-service technology, to an enterprise-grade hybrid cloud will allow large companies to swiftly build and run cloud apps that stitch together existing system and connect data and API’s into a single environment while providing access to IBM’s open-standards-based syndicated catalog of over 120 combined IBM and third-party services.
Security, stability and flexibility offered through Bluemix Local’s granular visibility on a single dashboard across all public, private and on-prem environments will provide unprecendented insight and control for a large company to maintain updates, patches, and data syncs anywhere, anytime, through any browser, across all countries and devices using the power and flexibility of Bluemix.
“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 gave this example.
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.
It is perfect timing for IBM’s offering as Gartner predicts that nearly half of all enterprise companies will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.
