IBM's Cloud Marketplace to Offer An Array of Enterprise Services

IBM is taking what it is billing as its next major step in the cloud by launching IBM Cloud marketplace, featuring tools and resources targeted to help developers, IT managers and business leaders to learn, try, and buy software and services from IBM and its global partner ecosystem. "This single online destination will serve as the digital front door to cloud innovation bringing together IBM's capabilities-as-a-service and those of partners and third party vendors with the security and resiliency enterprises expect," says the company.

Back in January, I reported on IBM's intent to put billions behind new cloud initiatives, including ones focused on OpenStack. Then, IBM announced plans to commit  more than $1.2 billion to significantly expand its global cloud footprint. The investment included a network of cloud centers that clients can leverage, including allowing businesses to run their IT operations in the cloud.

The new IBM Cloud marketplace will let clients access a full suite of IBM-as-a-Service implementations with 100 SaaS applications, IBM's Bluemix platform-as-a-service with composable services, the powerful SoftLayer infrastructure-as-a-service and third party cloud services.

"Increasingly cloud users from business, IT and development across the enterprise are looking for easy access to a wide range of services to address new business models and shifting market conditions," said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Software & Cloud Solutions, in a statement. "IBM Cloud marketplace puts Big Data and Analytics, mobile, social, commerce, integration ---- the full power of IBM-as-a-Service and our ecosystem --- at our clients' fingertips to help them quickly deliver innovative services to their constituents."

Several IBM partners including SendGrid, Zend, Redis Labs, Sonian, Flow Search Corp, Deep DB, M2Mi and Ustream have featured an array of cloud services on IBM marketplace for enterprise clients. 

IBM's cloud marketplace has several key components: For Line of Business Professionals, the marketplace will let users learn about and help with deployment of over SaaS applications. For IT departments, the marketplace will offer cloud services built on Softlayer to help clients deploy cloud applications.

Since its acquisition in 2013, IBM SoftLayer has reportedly served 4,500 new cloud clients, and many of IBM's cloud initiatives are focused on SoftLayer. The company has also stayed committed to OpenStack, though. At this point, it's not clear how OpenStack will fit in with the new IBM Cloud marketplace.