IBM Delivers OpenStack-based SmartCloud Orchestrator

Do we still live in a world where a vote of confidence from IBM is a blue-chip blessing? If so, OpenStack just got such a blessing as the tech industry giant announced a completely open architecture for its cloud software and services. IBM was among the early vendors to become a Platinum sponsor of the open source OpenStack project, and the company's new cloud offering is based around OpenStack. Here are the details, as IBM steps up competition in a crowded field of cloud competitors.

IBM's announcement contains a bit of hyperbole. Its OpenStack-based cloud offering, called IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator, is focused on enterprises who want speed and simplicity in cloud deployments. And the company claims this: "For the first time, businesses have a core set of open source-based technologies to build enterprise-class cloud services that can be ported across hybrid cloud environments."

Actually, competition in open source-based, OpenStack-based hybrid cloud platforms is fierce, and IBM is just joining the fray. If you cycled back the clock a couple of decades, though, lots of observers would be surprised to see Big Blue placing a huge bet on open source and open standards. The company's announcement even gives a shout-out to Linux:

""History has shown that standards and open source are hugely beneficial to end customers and are a major catalyst for innovation," said Robert LeBlanc, IBM senior vice president of software, in a statement. "Just as standards and open source revolutionized the Web and Linux, they will also have a tremendous impact on cloud computing. IBM has been at the forefront of championing standards and open source for years, and we are doing it again for cloud computing. The winner here will be customers, who will not find themselves locked into any one vendor -- but be free to choose the best platform based on the best set of capabilities that meet their needs."

IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator features a graphical interface, and with it enterprises can manage compute, storage and network resources. The company claims it can "simplify the end user consumption of cloud services, via an intuitive self-service portal, including the ability to measure the cost of cloud services with metering and charge-back capabilities."

IBM is dedicating more than 500 developers to the project, and you can find out more about SmartCloud Orchestrator here. 

And, you can find a collection of our cloud computing resources, including many interviews and tutorial gudes, here.