IBM Brings SOA to the Cloud

Leveraging the latest hot topic in communications and networking, IBM (News - Alert) is delivering a new hardware appliance that will extend its clients’ SOA investments into the cloud computing environment. The idea is to provide clients a solution, which actually consists of two components, that will allow them to move their service creation environments into managed environments, which have seen increased interest, largely due to their cost effective nature.

 

IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance provides access to software virtual images that can either be used in their existing forms or modified for customized applications. They can then be deployed and managed securely in cloud environment. 

 

The second piece, included in the CloudBurst appliance, is IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition. It’s a version of the IBM WebSphere Application Server software specifically designed for increasingly popular virtual environments, like VMware.

 

IBM claims its WebSphere CloudBurst appliance is the first of its kind, allowing users to develop, test, and deploy business applications the driving force behind the entire SaaS (News - Alert) and cloud computing model. With CloudBurst, users have a reusable, application creation environment, which allows them to use resources, then return them automatically to a shared resource pool, where they are available for use for other services, significantly cutting development time.

 

“IBM’s WebSphere CloudBurst combines SOA with cloud services that allow our customers to work smarter,” said Jim Deters, President of Ascendant Technology (News - Alert). “Our customers are looking for ways to simplify their IT environments and leverage their existing assets.  WebSphere CloudBurst will help them deploy and manage SOA in a cloud environment.”

 

The new solution is built to provide more than 400 optimal configurations and deployment specifications for application delivery into the WebSphere Application Server environment.

 

For today’s increasingly complex data centers, which need to support the cloud environment, and the increased traffic this new service delivery model drives, CloudBurst is also designed to integrate into IBM’s Tivoli Service Automation Manager, which the company says “provides the capability to request, fulfill and manage complete software stacks for the data center and complements WebSphere CloudBurst with intelligent, pattern-based deployment and management of WebSphere within a cloud.”

In basic terms, what it amount to is a solution that allows businesses to handle the combination of service and application complexity, and balance it with cost effectiveness by allowing them to consolidate and manage existing resources and applications in their SOA foundations.

“The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance combines the flexibility of SOA with the adaptability of the cloud,” said Tom Rosamilia, general manager of WebSphere at IBM. “Its new capabilities for rapid deployment deliver a fast return on investment to our clients.”