IBM has announced a new suite of beta services for the OpenStack cloud platform, enabling developers and enterprises to integrate applications and data across public, private and hybrid cloud environments.
The new IBM Cloud OpenStack Services allow developers to launch applications on-premises or in the OpenStack cloud using IBM’s SoftLayer cloud computing infrastructure, without making code or configuration changes. According to Douglas Vardakas, program manager at IBM, the new services are a way for developers to build and test applications leveraging the interoperability of OpenStack for cross-cloud deployment and rapid provisioning.
“Applications are easily migrated to a production system, either local, on premise or hosted on the cloud,” said Vardakas. “These capabilities allow the development and operations community to manage the Continuous Delivery life cycle of multi-tier applications across the hybrid OpenStack compute environment.”
(Related: OpenStack is open for business)
Vardakas said IBM’s cloud services provide the “glue” between leveraging open-source technologies and platforms such as Cloud Foundry, Node.js, Docker, jQuery and OpenStack, pointing specifically to integrations with IBM’s Bluemix development platform. IBM Cloud OpenStack Services will also provide developers and organizations with cloud monitoring, analytics and security controls for enterprise, Web and mobile applications, along with managing the OpenStack environment in IBM data centers.
Going forward, Vardakas said IBM’s investment in OpenStack indicates the company’s commitment to the leadership of the OpenStack Foundation to the end of cloud interoperability for increasing flexibility in cloud deployments. IBM also serves as one of the companies on the OpenStack Foundation’s new board of directors.
According to IBM, the company’s developers contributed to 11,676 code reviews, implemented 68 blueprints, and fixed 520 bugs for a total of 232,382 lines of code in the latest release of OpenStack, codenamed Kilo.
“As a member of the new Board of Directors, our goal is to help progress the platform, sustain a vibrant ecosystem, and position OpenStack as the IaaS platform of choice for cloud consumers and providers,” said Vardakas. “OpenStack is important to IBM in enhancing our IBM Cloud offerings by expanding support for different hypervisors at the IaaS Cloud layer. We envision adding value higher in the cloud management stack with workload optimization and deployment simplification integrated with OpenStack through cloud standards.”
