IBM today announced that Bluemix, the company’s open cloud development platform, is now generally available with more than 50 services for building secure, cloud-based business applications. Today’s addition of new services, and the rapid adoption and growth of Bluemix during its four-month open beta period, makes IBM’s deployment of Cloud Foundry one of the largest in the world.
Bluemix combines the strength of IBM’s middleware software with other open services and tools from IBM partners and its developer ecosystem. Bluemix’s unique platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model offers DevOps in the cloud – an open, agile development model scalable from one-person startups to large enterprises. The growing catalog, available via IBM’s Cloud Marketplace, includes tools in categories such as Big Data, social, mobile, security, and the Internet of Things, and for industries ranging from mobile commerce, academia, advertising, and emerging spaces such as wearables.
“Organizations are rapidly moving new, innovative apps to Cloud Foundry’s scalable, user-friendly model,” said James Watters, vice president of Cloud Foundry Product and Ecosystem at Pivotal. “IBM Bluemix furthers the Cloud Foundry vision for rapid app development, as well as the ability for developers to work easily between platforms and tools from multiple providers.”
New partner services being added to Bluemix and within the IBM marketplace include:
• Redis Cloud: Helping to meet developers’ increasing need to use the cloud to rapidly access huge volumes of data and run their Redis datasets, Bluemix users will now be able to connect to Redis using the powerful and global SoftLayer cloud – helping to improve both the scalability and availability of the data they need to build.
• Sonian: Adding to an array of solutions to help developers organize and mine Big Data, Sonian’s flagship service, Email Archive, helps users better capitalize on the vast amounts of data generated from email, attachments and other intellectual property.
• ClearChat: Enables users to develop and test for multiple mobile platforms such as iOS and Android. ClearChat’s mobile services provide common channels for users of an app to communicate – regardless of platform or device.
IBM also continues to deploy more of its own technology onto Bluemix, such as its MQ Light messaging service to help developers quickly and easily connect different components of an app together in the cloud – regardless of programming language, and Gamificationservices to help create new systems of engagement with app users via game-like incentives.
Through IBM Design, the company has also invested in enhancing the design of Bluemix’s user experience to help developers quickly find what they need as more services are added and the Bluemix platform grows.
Today, it is estimated that nearly 60 percent of developers are building for the cloud, according to Evans Data. Using Bluemix, developers are creating new cloud-based applications which integrate and extend into companies’ existing IT infrastructure, such as Gamestop’s new mobile app, which will combine the in-store and online shopping experience for customers.
“Working with the Bluemix platform, we are prototyping new ways to engage with our players from the online to the in-store experience,” said Jeff Donaldson, senior vice president of GameStop’s Technology Institute. “Being able to add loyalty functionality as well as rapidly test, retool and deploy our mobile apps on Bluemix is giving us a competitive advantage in a market where speed means everything.”
Additional Bluemix users include Kiwi Wearables, a company thatis reshaping its emerging industry by integrating wearables into the Internet of Things via Bluemix services, enabling them to intelligently communicate user movements with smartphones, appliances and more. Vivocha is using Bluemix tools and infrastructure to build an e-commerce customer engagement platform which helps e-retailers increase the likelihood of shoppers completing a transaction by 10 to 25 percent.
Other cloud-based apps in development on Bluemix include Garrigan Lyman Group’s data-driven apps for digital marketing; and DataSkill’s use of Bluemix to rapidly deliver creative, cognitive analytics apps to help healthcare organizations train their systems for the Big Data era. Additionally, academic institutions such as Dakota State University are using Bluemix to expose students to Big Data and analytics tools.
