IDC research indicates 83% of Australian organisations are already either evaluating, deploying or embracing enterprise private cloud architecture.
IBM estimates the average growth for the private cloud market in Australia and New Zealand will be about 21%, over a four-year period to 2020.
Yet, while a brand-new company today could be cloud-native on day one, the reality is enterprises have a lot of built-up legacies. There are core applications and data to consider, and the necessary infrastructure to support these.
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“Innovation and adoption of public cloud services has been constrained by the challenge of transitioning complex enterprise systems and applications into a true cloud-native environment,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice-president for IBM Hybrid Cloud and director of IBM Research. “IBM Cloud Private brings rapid application development and modernisation to existing IT infrastructure and positions it to be combined with the services and experience of a public cloud platform.”
The idea behind IBM Cloud Private software is that companies can create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds, accelerating app development. The new platform is built on the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports both Docker containers and Cloud Foundry. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads as they evolve to any cloud environment, including the public IBM Cloud.
IBM also announced new container-optimised versions of core enterprise software, such as IBM WebSphere Liberty, Db2 and MQ. This makes it easier to share data and evolve applications as needed across IBM Cloud private and public clouds and other cloud environments with a consistent experience.
An airline, for example, could use IBM Cloud Private to bring a core application tracking frequent flyer miles into a private cloud environment and connect it to a new mobile app in the public cloud. A financial services firm could use it to keep customer data in-house as it works to meet its security and regulatory requirements while taking advantage of new analytic tools and machine learning in the public cloud to quickly identify investment trends and opportunities.
Global car rental company, The Hertz Corporation, believes both public and private cloud is critical to achieving its technology objectives.
“Private cloud is a must for many enterprises such as ours working to reduce or eliminate their dependence on internal data centres,” said Tyler Best, Hertz chief technology officer. “A strategy consisting of public, private and hybrid cloud are essential for large enterprises to effectively make the transition from legacy systems to cloud. Hertz is an early adopter of both public and private IBM cloud and we could not accomplish our technology goals without private cloud as part of our overall cloud portfolio.”
To further encourage the adoption and progression of private cloud technology locally, IBM Cloud Garage Melbourne opened in the Melbourne CBD this week, offering developers access to DevOp microservices on the IBM Cloud Private platform.
IBM Cloud Garages serve as a hub where developers, product managers and designers can come together to build on IBM’s cloud platform, providing access to more than 150 APIs and services available. These include cognitive intelligence, IoT tools, blockchain and cloud data services.
In Melbourne, the IBM Cloud Garage is co-located with the Melbourne Accelerator Program, an initiative designed to fund startups and foster greater collaboration, hosted by Melbourne University’s Carlton Connect Initiative.
It is one of nine IBM Cloud Garages around the world including New York, San Francisco, Austin, London, Toronto, Nice, Tokyo, and Singapore.
