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Understanding IBM’s Hybrid

and Multicloud Strategy

Judith Hurwitz
President & CEO

Daniel Kirsch
Managing Director

Sponsored by IBM
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Introduction

Increasingly, business leaders are combining innovation and the flexibility of

cloud services with the rigors required to keep the business secure, compliant,
and manageable. Pragmatic leaders are converging on an approach that
combines the power of the hybrid and multicloud with the flexibility of open
… a hybrid cloud becomes
source and standards. In this paper, we will provide our point of view on the
requirements for the enterprise hybrid multicloud environment in conjunction a virtual computing
with IBM’s technical strategy. environment that matches
workloads to the most
appropriate computing
Defining the Hybrid Cloud model.

A hybrid cloud is an environment that integrates traditional IT with a

combination of public, private, or managed cloud services. In essence, a hybrid
cloud becomes a virtual computing environment that matches workloads to the
most appropriate computing model. All these services need to be managed as
though they were designed to behave as a single unified environment.

The Journey to Hybrid Cloud

We recently had the opportunity to speak to a CIO who helped his company
make the strategic transformation from an inflexible and chaotic infrastructure
to a hybrid computing approach. The business was changing too fast to simply
carry on with business as usual. The company had to compete with emerging
competitors that did not have to contend with any technical or business legacy.
The CIO’s mandate was to create an IT environment that was innovative, flexible,
scalable, manageable, and safe.

After many years spent focusing on reducing capital expenses through the
introduction of public clouds it became clear that this approach was not able to
meet the demands of the enterprise. The only viable solution was to embrace
open source standards implemented in a hybrid and multicloud environment.
At the same time, his organization was able to extract important intellectual
property and best practices trapped within existing applications that had to
be transformed into modular services. To gain acceptance from management,
the new cloud environment had to have security and compliance at its core.
Administrators also needed to have consistent ways to manage integration and
data services. The predictability and manageability of the hybrid cloud now
enables the business to move fast to create new value in light of competitive
threats, while at the same time delighting customers with innovation and new
products. All of this had to be accomplished while keeping costs under control.

The CIO could not afford to stand by as IT devolved into an unmanageable

“Wild West.” His goal was to create a modular foundation that could withstand
technology and business change. Therefore, he created a plan based on open
standards and hybrid and multicloud that would offer business leaders a choice

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of deployment models that best suited their objectives. He moved forward with
platform services that would support a continuous software development and
deployment model combined with ubiquitous and security services. At the same
time, he began the process of modernizing and refactoring existing applications
so that they were modular and flexible. He had to do all of this while maintaining
customer satisfaction.
It isn’t enough to have a
It is clear from the experience of this CIO and many of his peers that business as world-shattering idea if you
usual is dead. Instead, enterprise leaders must be on a quest to innovate quickly don’t have the technology
while maintaining the advantages of their deep intellectual property, their infrastructure to support
installed base and revenue. It is not a simple transition. Successful enterprise change and execute at scale.
leaders understand the challenge and have selected a hybrid cloud environment.
One size does not fit all. Rather, to be successful, businesses are focused on a
multicloud, open source strategy that allows them to innovate, scale and protect
their assets and their customers.

Innovation at Scale Matters

It isn’t enough to have a world-shattering idea if you don’t have the technology
infrastructure to support change and execute at scale. We are entering an
interesting stage of the digital transformation movement. Established businesses
have sounded the alarm as they have watched startups – that have no legacy
systems – move fast with great ideas and new business models. These emerging
companies have indeed caused revolutions in many industries. Market
incumbents have been forced to rethink how they conduct business and how
they use technology. Although it might seem like these market stalwarts have no
chance against nimble, born-on-the-web competitors, established companies
have the benefit of decades of industry and customer data as well as intellectual
property and complex business rules. Additionally, these businesses know how
to scale to support a global footprint.

How IBM’s Cloud Strategy Has Evolved

IBM’s cloud strategy has evolved as customer expectations for the cloud
have exploded. IBM has poured a significant investment into a hybrid and
multicloud foundation based on industry standards and open source. At the
core of IBM’s cloud strategy is the understanding that customers need a unified
and streamlined way to create modular application services, to transform and
modernize legacy, and to manage all services, no matter where those workloads
reside. All of these services need to be cataloged, secured, managed, and
governed based on policy rules.

The only way to accomplish a unified approach to cloud computing is to

coalesce a strategy based on open source and standards. Therefore, it is easy
to understand why IBM created a platform centered on Kubernetes. The IBM
cloud model enables the customer to have the same services available on the

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IBM private and public clouds as well as on any third-party public cloud and
services at the edge. The power and versatility of open source, including Linux,
open APIs, and Kubernetes, has helped IBM transform its software so that it has
become modular and has unified services that can be more easily managed.

IBM has the benefit of providing computing platforms to support some of

the largest and most complex workloads in the world. IBM has many years of
Business leaders understand
experience implementing domain specific applications based on sophisticated the inherent risks of relying
business processes. These best practices are based on expertise from Global on a single vendor for
Business Services and Global Technology Services. These organizations provide all situations. Therefore,
business and technical guidance to customers across the globe in vertical smart business leaders are
markets ranging from financial services to retail and transportation. To plan for demanding an environment
dramatic business and technical change, all of these industries depend on a that combines a variety of
hybrid and multicloud-based environment. public and private clouds,
hosted services, edge
Business leaders understand the inherent risks of relying on a single vendor for
computing, and data center
all situations. Therefore, smart business leaders are demanding an environment
that combines a variety of public and private clouds, hosted services, edge capabilities from a number
computing, and data center capabilities from a number of different vendors. This of different vendors.
hybrid environment must be both secure and manageabie no matter where the
services and workloads are deployed.

The IBM customer base is complex and therefore there are different
requirements for the transition to the cloud. IBM has defined three entry points
or models to support customers.
Migrating existing services to the cloud. Most large enterprises must
contend with a large number of outdated legacy applications and
infrastructure. These businesses need a path to modernize and refactor their
applications so that they gain the flexibility and agility needed for business
transformation. These businesses may begin by lifting existing applications
so they can be hosted on a cloud through the use of virtualization through
VMware services. This entry point is designed to help businesses that want to
take expenses out of their infrastructure.
Modernizing existing applications and services. Organizations are
transforming their applications with a container platform in order to
modernize and migrate existing applications. The computing environment
is analyzed to determine which applications can be reconstructed as
microservices and which applications will need to be redesigned. Once
containerized, it is possible to link those microservices as part of a cloud
foundation through the use of open standards. Once these existing
applications are refactored, developers can move quickly to create new
applications.
New Cloud Native Innovative Applications. Using cloud native services
such as Knative and serverless, developers can create next generation
applications that can be deployed within an open source Kubernetes
environment.

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Hybrid at the Core

In order to maintain a hybrid cloud solution there needs to be a consistent and

predictable integration of services and rich connectivity between all applications
and services – no matter where they originate. Leveraging existing investments
in applications and infrastructure is critical; business cannot just discard
One size does not fit all.
core infrastructure investments that are well designed to manage business
transactions. Rather, to be successful,
businesses must focus on
At the center of IBM’s cloud strategy is the adoption and support of a hybrid a hybrid, open source plan
and multicloud environment that allows customers to use the platforms and that allows them to scale
services they have already invested in, while also providing a large percentage of and protect their customers.
common open source services for ubiquitous integration, management, security,
and data management. This pragmatic approach is critical since up to this point
only a minority of workloads have been moved to the cloud. The foundation
for hybrid is the principle of a cloud-agnostic strategy that enables businesses
to use any existing or new service as part of their computing environment. This
needs to be executed in a way that minimizes lock-in and promotes portability of
workloads. To build a hybrid, multicloud strategy IBM is able to combine its open
source strategy with its depth of product services for integration, connectivity,
and management.

The adoption of hybrid computing is moving fast. While many businesses

have taken advantage of Infrastructure as a Service, they have resisted moving
business critical workloads that require security, low latency, and compliance.
With the advent of emerging open source cloud technologies, the shift to the
cloud is rapidly evolving. The timing is right for companies across industries to
leverage innovation that scales. It is not enough to simply scale with compute
services. Enterprises are increasingly demanding Linux as the open operating
system, refactoring code as containerized microservices and leveraging
containerized middleware services for agile integration while managing complex
data and policy. The combination of all of these distributed services needs to be
managed in a consistent and secure manner to enable integration across clouds
and on premises data and applications.

One size does not fit all. Rather, to be successful, businesses must focus on a
hybrid, open source plan that allows them to scale and protect their customers.
It is necessary to leverage different computing models for different use cases.
There are complex business applications that cannot easily be rewritten
without a massive and expensive effort. Many of these services reside in the
data center or are hosted in an enterprise cloud. In addition, there is a need for
public cloud services to support agile DevOps requirements. Public clouds are
ubiquitous and will continue to grow and mature. There is not a single public
cloud that all customers demand. Rather, there are a variety of public clouds
that are adopted across lines of business. In addition, there are mission-critical
workloads containing strategic data that businesses do not want to place in
the public cloud. Considerations such as security and compliance and latency
are core to why businesses are insisting on a hybrid environment. Given these
considerations, IBM has adopted a hybrid and multicloud approach.

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To understand IBM’s cloud strategy, it is important to understand the IBM cloud

offerings. In this next section we will provide context and details of the six
technology imperatives.

The core principles of the IBM cloud are:

IBM has long been making
significant investments in
open source technologies,
-- for example contributions
to Linux, Hadoop, Spark,
identify, access, encryption, and key management Kubernetes, Calico, Helm,
Istio and Knative.

The Open Source Requirement

With few exceptions, open source is at the core of the hybrid cloud. For example,
multiple studies indicate that open source Linux is by far and away the most
popular operating system on the cloud – sometimes referred to as the cloud
operating system. The dominance of Linux has opened a broad ecosystem of
open source tools platforms that are fueling the hybrid and multicloud market.

IBM has long been making significant investments in open source technologies,
-- for example contributions to Linux, Hadoop, Spark, Kubernetes, Calico, Helm,
Istio and Knative. This investment in open source has increased dramatically over
the past five years as IBM has begun to transform its public and private cloud
platforms based on open source standards.

One of the key rationales for IBM’s pending acquisition of Red Hat is the reality of
Red Hat’s business model and customer engagement. (The acquisition is subject
to regulatory reviews. Until close, the parties are separate and independent
companies.)

Red Hat’s product offerings are all based on commercial open source software,
ranging from the most popular Linux distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
(RHEL), to other offerings like Red Hat Ansible, OpenShift, and CloudForms,
which provides a variety of automation and management technologies to
improve operational agility.

Both IBM and Red Hat have containerization at the core of their strategies. Both
companies focus on managing workloads across the enterprise and assume
a hybrid computing environment. Red Hat is well respected by the developer
community for its support of open source and its ability to deliver these
resources in an enterprise- safe manner. Additionally, Red Hat provides the most
important commercial Linux distribution that is the foundation for a majority of
enterprise customers. Both companies are focused on creating enterprise scale
solutions to support a large variety of solutions and tools all based on an open
source framework.

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Foundation based on Kubernetes

Kubernetes provides an open source container orchestration platform that can
automate the tasks of creating modern applications. Applications can either be
encapsulated, as they exist today, or rewritten as a series of native microservices.
Open source Istio, a service mesh, allows organizations to connect, secure,
control, and observe services. Calico allows networking and network policy The benefits of Kubernetes
in Kubernetes clusters across the cloud. Helm, an open source platform, is a
to IBM cannot be overstated.
packaged manager for Kubernetes that enables developers and operational staff
to package, configure, and deploy applications and services onto Kubernetes
IBM has made the strategic
clusters. Knative is a pure Kubernetes universal resource model that provides a decision to base both its
consistent API-based wrapper service for legacy workloads. Knative can work public and private cloud
with a variety of models including Cloud Foundry, OpenShift, and serverless on the same Kubernetes
(OpenWhisk) frameworks built on top of Kubernetes and Istio in order to support orchestration. Kubernetes
serverless event driven functions. is a portable and extensible
open source platform for
The benefit of the combination of Kubernetes with services such as Istio, Calico, managing containerized
and Helm permits developers to write services once and deploy them on any workloads and services.
cloud. With a Kubernetes and microservices approach, developers can push code
out to any deployment model without changing the entire app. This capability
allows an increased ability to respond to customer feedback, competition, and
potential security issues. With Kubernetes in place, the same infrastructure can
exist on any public cloud or private cloud without any change.

Another important benefit of containerization is that with Kubernetes, any

service such as data, middleware, and security services can be implemented
in these containers with consistent and well-defined APIs. This dramatically
transforms the ability to create a consistent and unified hybrid environment.

The benefits of Kubernetes to IBM cannot be overstated. IBM has made the
strategic decision to base both its public and private cloud on the same
Kubernetes orchestration. Kubernetes is a portable and extensible open source
platform for managing containerized workloads and services. One of the
values of Kubernetes for IBM is that it is optimized to support all infrastructure
platforms --including virtual machines-- to mainframes, and bare metal
infrastructure. Another key reason for IBM selecting Kubernetes is the expansive
ecosystem of tools and services that IBM leverages. This means that IBM is able
to leverage important Kubernetes infrastructure tools including Istio, Calico, and
Helm.

Another reason that IBM has adopted Kubernetes is that it provides a

standardized way to build, package, deploy and run applications built with any
language. Given the breadth of enterprise workloads, it makes sense to provide a
platform that reflects the wide variety of IBM’s customer deployments.

IBM provides standards-based Kubernetes services. Without exception, all

software and platform services have been containerized. In the IBM public cloud,
IBM includes the IBM Kubernetes Service. IKS is a container orchestration service
standardized workload pattern that enables a workload to run secure workload
at the edge or over the network. It can connect through a virtual private network

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connection to use legacy services containerized on the IBM private cloud. For
the IBM Cloud Private (ICP), IBM has created a Kubernetes that has containerized
both IBM and OpenShift middleware. ICP also containerizes all services that are
native to the host environment including IDAP and management services in the
host.

One of the most important changes that IBM has containerized is its middleware
IBM’s approach to hybrid
integration services managed through Kubernetes. The common integration and multicloud security
platform includes existing IBM products such as API and APP Connect, MQ, is to create a set of built-
Aspera (secure high speed data transfer) and Event Streams. It has incorporated in capabilities that are
open source middleware offerings such as Jboss, TomCat, Kafka, and Liberty. All independent of the
of these offerings are provided in an “as a service” model on both the IBM public infrastructure layer.
and private cloud and on any third-party public cloud.

Security at the Core

One of the most important concerns for businesses is information security. In
a highly distributed hybrid and multicloud environment security is a major
challenge. Hybrid and multicloud security is complicated because experts
cannot simply secure a single location – everything is decentralized. Therefore, a
perimeter approach defined by firewalls is no longer adequate. IBM’s approach
to hybrid and multicloud security is to create a set of built-in capabilities that
are independent of the infrastructure layer. These core security services are
intended to manage all aspects of security including access management,
network security, and data protection services (including protection for data at
rest, in motion and in memory). Because of the hybrid nature of the IBM solution,
visibility into a variety of log activities and control of access is at the heart of
the platform. The IBM cloud platform includes a catalog of certified IBM security
services that can be implemented when needed. The catalog services takes on
the responsibility of ensuring that all these disparate services can operate within
this multicloud environment.

Built-in Cloud Security

IBM has created a set of built-in cloud security capabilities that can be used
across a hybrid and multicloud environment. These include the following:

Visibility
One of the most difficult security tasks is to have consistent visibility into the
security of a hybrid and multicloud environment. IBM has developed what it
calls the Security Dashboard. This service provides visibility to the administrator
across all platforms. It provides access to logs from all of the services being
used through a series of APIs. It also provides a vulnerability advisor that helps
set policies for who is allowed to access a service based on compliance and
policies. The Security Dashboard (hosted in the IBM Cloud) can bring in data
from private as well as public clouds such as AWS and Azure. Third-party vendors

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can integrate their services into the dashboard. The service keeps track of which
employees or contractors are permitted to access services.

Managing Access
One of the greatest security risks in a hybrid/multicloud environment is to
be able to control access at both the network level and at the individual Encryption is a key to any
level regarding who is allowed to access what service for what purpose. At data protection strategy
the network level, it is imperative to be able to identify malicious access and
– encrypting all data will
anomalous behavior. Through the access management services, customers can
gain insights from activity logs and aggregate those security events and logs in ensure that even if there
order to understand the risks across a multicloud environment. is a breach, the criminals
will not be able to read or
Protect Data and Applications understand that data.
Securing distributed data and applications is not easy. First, data may be at rest,
in transit, or in memory. No matter the form, all of the data must be secured.
The data may be managed within an object store, a cloud database, a virtual
machine, or in the data center. IBM is providing a set of hyper protect data
management services that is offered as a cloud service. This brings the highest
level of data security and provides ways to control that security. Encryption is a
key to any data protection strategy – encrypting all data will ensure that even if
there is a breach, the criminals will not be able to read or understand that data.
These security services can be implemented in a container, a virtual machine, or
on premises in a private cloud. IBM includes key management services, including
the ability for the client to be the only holder of the key – meaning that IBM itself
has no copy of the encryption key.

Customers that use LinuxONE or IBM Z as a cloud service are able to take
advantage of the platform’s pervasive encryption technology. Pervasive
encryption can encrypt data both at rest and in flight, and this type of
encryption doesn’t require application changes. This approach enables
companies to encrypt all their data by default with little compute overhead.
Because of the overhead of software encryption, businesses in the past have
been forced to choose which data to encrypt, leaving the remaining data at
risk. In nearly every online interaction, data is left unencrypted at some point
in the process. This point, when data is left unencrypted, gives wrongdoers the
opportunity to steal data. IBM Z and LinuxONE both have dedicated hardware
specifically tuned for encryption. The on-chip encryption co-processor is on
every compute chip next to the main processor and can encrypt up to 13
gigabytes (GB) of data per second per core.

Key Protect is a cloud-based security service that provides lifecycle management

for encryption keys used in IBM Cloud services. The service enables customers
to import their own Roots of Trust (RoT) keys into the cloud service. With the Key
Protect API, it is possible to encrypt and decrypt the keys that are associated with
a service or data so that the customer controls data security in the cloud. The key
protect service complies with the Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS)
140-2, Level 4, the highest level of protection available.

Managing distributed applications is likewise challenging. IT management

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must be able to understand the security requirements of the application and

be prepared to authenticate the end user. Where is that application allowed to
run? Can it run anywhere or are there geographic restrictions? Are there some
applications that should only run in the data center or in a private cloud? Can
that application migrate from one public cloud to another? The IBM service
provides an API-driven industry standard App ID that authenticates users
and implements policies regarding who can access data and where it can Multicloud Manager
run. It provides this service across all applications that are part of the hybrid (MCM), is a command and
environment. control service to manage
Kubernetes deployments.
Additional IBM Cloud Security Offerings The service provides lifecycle
In addition to these core services, IBM offers its broad portfolio of security for governance, policy
products including QRadar (both on the cloud and on premises), security management and security
connect, cloud Identity, Guardium, and Hybrid Cloud Security and compliance in a hybrid environment
services. by managing Kubernetes
clusters.
Managing a multicloud hybrid environment

IBM has developed a platform designed to support the need to manage

workloads across a hybrid and multicloud environment. This service, called
Multicloud Manager (MCM), is a command and control service to manage
Kubernetes deployments. The service provides lifecycle for governance, policy
management and security in a hybrid environment by managing Kubernetes
clusters. The service can manage clusters in either a public or private cloud. To
address the needs of virtual machine- (VM) based workloads, MCM can work in
conjunction with IBM’s Cloud Automation Manager (CAM). CAM can provision
the VM, put it into a Kubernetes cluster and then connect back to MCM for
management. MCM is designed to provision services across multiple public
clouds including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM’s cloud services.

One of the benefits of MCM is that it can scale out Kubernetes clusters and
dynamically add and remove nodes. As applications and services are deployed,
MCM provides standards-based Terraform as its load balancer. In fact, all of the
services that underlie MCM are based on accepted and emerging open source
standards. MCM is available either as a software license or as a managed service.

MCM also provides a consist way to manage integration. To reduce the footprint
of integration, the service provides a common user interface, common APIs,
and common API management, as well as common logging and management
services. The common APIs provide a platform for hybrid cloud data exchange
data and business process management services. One of the benefits of the
Integration service is that it permits businesses to incorporate existing enterprise
services such as billing and transaction management services so that they can
be seamlessly integrated with cloud services. MCM also plays an important
role in managing security. The only way to secure a distributed environment
is to containerize both workloads and data that provide consistent APIs. A
containerized approach enables applications, operations, and data services to all

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be managed in a consistent manner to support security and governance.

The Multicloud Manager is designed with a central point of control so that it

incorporates a customer hub to manage the Kubernetes environments. This hub
includes a graphic user interface that shows where pods are running, and what
the compliance rules are in place across cloud services. Out of the box, MCM
includes identity and access management for all services being managed. One
IBM’s Cloud Private for Data
of the reasons why MCM is well suited for a hybrid and multicloud environment (ICP for Data) is composed
is that the offering does not have to know in advanced which cloud platform of a set of pre-configured
each cluster is running. The system will show the administrator where the cluster microservices that run on
is running and indicate the health across clouds. It will notify the administrator a multi-node IBM Cloud
if a pod or cluster is failing and indicate the performance of each service, no Private cluster.
matter which cloud it is running on. The solution abstracts events and leverages
management services such as ServiceNow or IBM’s NetCool via APIs to indicate
the performance of the overall multicloud environment.

In addition, MCM manages the configuration setting across cloud environments

in an abstracted way so that the developer doesn’t have to set the right
indicators. By enforcing consistent policies and configurations across
environments, organizations can avoid the performance, cost and security
problems that can occur when developers fail to implement the correct
configuration settings.

Managing and Analyzing Distributed Data

As customers begin to migrate to hybrid and multicloud environments, they

need to have a consistent and predictable way to manage all of their data
sources. This is not an easy proposition since the typical enterprise has a
multitude of different databases and data sources that they rely on.

The only practical way of understanding and managing this complex set of data
sources in a consistent and predictable way is to leverage advanced machine
learning algorithms. To address the challenges of managing, ingesting and
analyzing data from a variety of sources, IBM has built machine learning and
Artificial Intelligence capabilities throughout the platform. The machine learning
technology streamlines and automates time intensive tasks like data cleansing,
integration, and cataloging of business ready data.

IBM’s Cloud Private for Data (ICP for Data) is composed of a set of pre-
configured microservices that run on a multi-node IBM Cloud Private cluster.
The microservices enable the organization to connect to a variety of cloud and
on premises data sources including relational, NoSQL, IoT, and text data, so they
can be consistently catalogued, governed, transformed, and analyzed through
a single web application. This pre-integration means that the data layer doesn’t
require customers to integrate various data management and analytics offerings.

Many companies have tried to break down silos by copying data from different
operational systems into central data stores for analysis such as data marts, data

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warehouses and data lakes. There are many problems that occur during this
data movement. For example, it is expensive, time consuming and cumbersome
to manage so many disparate data sources. Data can be inadvertently exposed
when data is disconnected from security and governance policies. To avoid the
challenges of replicating and moving data for analytics, IBM has developed a
data virtualization approach called IBM QueryPlex. Queryplex allows an analytics
application to submit a query that is then processed on the system where the In addition, all of the data
data resides. Results of the query are then sent back to the analytics application. services in the IBM Cloud
platform are delivered in
In addition, all of the data services in the IBM Cloud platform are delivered in containers and supported
containers and supported by Kubernetes-based orchestration services. The result by Kubernetes-based
of this containerized approach is that IBM hybrid database services can operate orchestration services. The
on any public or private cloud service including the IBM Cloud, Amazon AWS, result of this containerized
and Microsoft Azure. In addition, the platform has standardized APIs to support approach is that IBM
all services to ease the ability to integrate services. hybrid database services
can operate on any public
The IBM cloud data platform can support a variety of the most widely used
relational databases including Db2 and the Db2 Warehouse, Oracle, as well or private cloud service
as NoSQL, MongoDB, Postgres, and IBM’s Event Store for streaming data including the IBM Cloud,
from sources like IoT workloads. Within the next year IBM expects to bring on Amazon AWS, and Microsoft
additional data services platforms through its partnerships including Redis, an Azure.
in-memory datastore.

To be effective in a hybrid cloud environment it is important that there are

core foundational services that make it easier to combine data from a variety
of sources in a meaningful and accurate manner. Services provided in the IBM
Cloud data platform are broken up into two segments: Foundational Platform
Services and Premium Services.

Foundational Platform Services

There are three types of foundational services in the IBM cloud data platform:

to link to infrastructure services, business glossary)

ETL, catalog, data curation, meta data management and classification

Premium Services
Once the foundational services are in place, the data platform is designed
to enable customers to add premium services – either those offered by IBM
or those offered by partners. These premium services are primarily used for
reporting, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). The Watson APIs
are available on the multicloud platform to add AI functionality to customer
applications. Some of these Watson APIs include Watson Assistant, to help build
chatbots; Speech to Text to convert audio and voice into written text; Tone
Analyzer to understand emotions and communication style in text; and, Visual
Recognition to tag, classify and train visual content. For customers who need

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basic reporting and business analytics services, there are the Cognos tools and
dashboard. For advanced analytics such as predictive analytics and machine
learning, IBM offers tools and services including SPSS to build predictive
analytics solutions. In addition, IBM offers Watson Studio to leverage open
source machine learning libraries to create machine learning-based applications.

The IBM Cloud data platform is designed to help customers break down data
Open Source and most
silos across their own departments and across all of the various data sources they importantly Linux and
need to manage their business. The fact that the platform is based on containers, Kubernetes play a pivotal
microservices, and APIs enhances the ability to make data services become an role in IBM’s transformed
equal citizen in creating a scalable hybrid and multicloud environment that is cloud strategy. In light of
imperative to ensuring that the hybrid and multicloud environment can support the concentration on open
the goals of the business. source, it is not surprising
that IBM would acquire Red
Hat as a natural partner to
Leading with Open Standards to Support the Scalable Hybrid Cloud
execute on its strategy.
IBM has been on a journey to create a hybrid, multicloud environment to
support the need of its enterprise customers. Open Source and most importantly
Linux and Kubernetes play a pivotal role in IBM’s transformed cloud strategy. In
light of the concentration on open source, it is not surprising that IBM would
acquire Red Hat as a natural partner to execute on its strategy. The combination
of an adherence to standards and open source and the focus on enterprise
scalability should position IBM well for the future.

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About Hurwitz & Associates

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technologies, such as Cloud and Multicloud Management, Big Data and Analytics, Machine Learning and
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the future of business agility. Their experienced team merges deep technical and business expertise to
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