Over 11,000 attendees convened at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for the annual IBM Pulse event. The event focused heavily on cloud and mobile and served as the backdrop to unveil BlueMIx, Big Blue’s PaaS platform for year’s to come. Adding to the seriousness of the announcement, IBM, made a $1B commitment to BlueMix. Side note: We have learned from recent announcements around SoftLayer data centers and Watson that when IBM is serious about something, it makes a one billion dollar investment.
Conversations with attendees indicate a very energized and excited crowd. Concurrently, IBM organized a developer conference, trendily called Dev@Pulse
BlueMix - lot's of Blue on a Greenish platform
BlueMix is IBM's PaaS product for the years to come. The project started over two years ago, was shepherded under veteran Danny Sabbah and must have gone through some pretty substantial iterations. Remember two years ago IBM had not invested into Pivotal - so there must have been a (true) blue ambition at some point. In fact, the future will tell what led to the investment in April 2013 (more here). The shift was a change for the better since it committed IBM into a community of multiple vendors which this week led into a new oversight committee for Pivotal.
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IBM Infographic on the 1B investment. |
So under the hood BlueMix runs on Pivotal's Cloud Foundry (hence the green - or what color is Pivotal's branding?) - but IBM enriches it in many ways:
Attractive user interface - IBM has done a good job creating an attractive user interface to run and tie applications on BlueMix. Of course you can go back to command line, but interestingly IBM shared that developers want to be more productive, too - so we will see how much mileage the overlaying user interface will get.
'Any' programming language - IBM devised BlueMix to be open and for developers to bring their code and 'just' deploy it. And that's a great design ambition but of course hard to do in the real world - so today IBM can do Java, Javascript, PHP, PERL and Ruby (not all supported by its own IDEs though).
Patterns prominently loom - IBM's pattern technology, originally devised with WebSphere - is getting good usage as part of BlueMix and is probably key to make the magic in the background work. Environments get more complex by the day - so the automation tool and it's capability are key for BlueMix's success.
A rich platform - IBM keeps exposing services and tools to BlueMix - most prominent right now are the Xtify push services. MongoDB was there and of course Cloudant (freshly announced acquisition) now, too. The extensibility here is key for IBM to augment BlueMix in the coming quarters, Watson services will be the clearly differentiating crown jewels.
Of course, SoftLayer - Almost needless to say IBM will run BlueMix on SoftLayer technology. Probably a good move to cater to a security sensitive audience that is re-assured by SoftLayer's bare metal capabilities, extended localization and transparency down to the machine level.
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Crosby with 'born on the web' SoftLayer customers |
Softlayer is the go forward answer for all things cloudy
Not surprisingly IBM keeps strengthening its SoftLayer commitment. Reading between the lines it is clear that the SoftLayer x86 legacy cannot support the Power based Watson plans - so not surprisingly IBM is bringing SoftLayer to run Power based systems. There was some confusion what's being brought to who - SoftLayer to Power or vice versa - but that is all good for a company like IBM finding and charting its course to cloud.
Likewise IBM will invest more into the DevOps visibility and capability of SoftLayer resources. SoftLayer had more of a run-time DNA in the past for their clients, so bringing the additional flexibility to run more and better development cycles with SoftLayer only augments the platform.
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LeBlanc introduces BlueMix |
BlueMix Moves Beyond the Big Blue Legacy
There are a few takeaways that this is not our father's IBM:
CloudFoundry - IBM used to build it all themselves - now it shares a foundation with co-opetitors like HP, SAP, VMware, EMC etc - an interesting aspect - that we e.g. also see in the open cloud arena with OpenStack.
Standards based - IBM has always been a promoter of standards, but was also large enough to create standards by its sheer size. Taking outside standards and building out on them is the strategy for sure now.
Developer focused - IBM was always good at building software with the user in mind. But the developer focus is certainly new and it was impressive to see to what length IBM has gone to understand the (shifting) needs of its developer base.
Openness - Again IBM has always been a supporter of open. But it was often more on paper and marketing than in every day IT life. It's good to see the openness moving way beyond the marketing messaging and into the product DNA.
Cloud First - This is probably the first product that IBM provides for developers - on the cloud first and for now - only. Good proof for IBM acknowledging the shift in the approach to tackle future revenue streams.
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Coding on stage - pair programming with Lawson and LeBlanc |
The bigger picture - 21st century enterprise applications
At the end of the day the question is - what will 21st century enterprise applications look like, how are they build and on what platforms do they run. We know the traditional ERP suites of the late 20th century are not the answer for a digital economy. We also know that building and managing software is getting more and more complex and more automation to handle this complexity coupled with less lock-in are promising directions for the future of building applications. Which leaves us to the only thing we know - that the 21st century apps will run on virtualized environments in the hybrid multi-cloud.
More to the applications themselves - it's clear that IBM is gambling on the API economy promise - to be able to bind together the APIs of IBM SaaS properties, with other non IBM APIs on a powerful platform. We know that this platform is BlueMix, which makes it a very strategic asset for IBM’s and its customers and partners future.
Implications, Implications...
So what does it mean for ...
IBM customers & prospects - You should actively look at BlueMix if you have an immediate application development need. IF you are a Rational shop, JazzHub is a good way to get started but you have probably many questions for IBM. Otherwise wait how IBM will build out BlueMix over the next quarters. If you are a customer of the IBM SaaS pay attention on the roadmap and functional richness of future releases.
Prospects should compare BlueMix with the usual suspects out there - Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure, Google GCE come to mind (watch for the end of March events).
Both customers and prospects should be careful not to overcommit until pricing and licensing are clear - which IBM has not published yet.
IBM partners - IBM has put the cards down for both it's PaaS and its 21st century Apps strategy - if you want to be part of it, time to start evaluating BlueMix and chart a strategy of differentiation in the partner ecosystem. And look at the patterns - this could be a key to more efficient engagements and potentially even the birth of an IP strategy for you.
Prospective partners who want to get a slice out of the IBM ecosystem have now a chance to jump in the mix - it's pretty much year 0 for the API economy. Good time to start.
IBM - IBM needs to keep adding and building more services and APIs into BlueMix. Early references, success stories will be key to show impact and get the large - and mostly conservative - IBM install base to move to BlueMix faster. Obviously, get the pricing right, easier said than done. Look into exposing more products that were features at IBMConnect as a differentiator to other cloud PaaS out there. Publish a road map both for the SoftLayer expansion to Power as well as the addition of APIs from the SaaS portfolio to BlueMix.
IBM competitors - Take a look at the broader perspective in what IBM is trying to do. If you compete in PaaS with IBM - you need a API strategy. If you compete on IaaS - you already know what the bare metal threat is for your business, so position and strategize accordingly. If you compete on SaaS - decide what the future for your 21st century apps architecture is.
MyPOV
For the longest time the ultimate application strategy for IBM has not been clear. Acquisitions seemed to be opportunistic and all over the map - at least from the outside. But maybe it was always the plan to move to the API economy - ultimately. Only Steve Mills will know. And interestingly Mills spoke about being able to do things better and a greater scale than ever before (see interview here).
BlueMix is the key asset as a platform to get IBM to the API economy, from a PaaS perspective and SoftLayer takes care of the infrastructure.
In spring 2014 IBM's future looks remarkably better than 12 months ago.
Here are some Storify Tweet Collections of the keynotes of Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3.
