Since our CEO Study series began, technology – in its widest sense – has progressively risen on CEOs’ radar and now ranks as the #1 factor impacting organizations.
From 2004 – 2012, we’ve interviewed more than 6,500 CEOs
2012 Study: 1700 CEOs interviewed: 64 countries, 18 industries
This year, CEOs told us that technology will be the top driver of change in the next three years, surpassing “market forces” for the first time. Most surprising, however, is its expected impact. They told us that what will be most critical and potentially differentiating will be how they engage people – connecting employees, customers and partners both to organizations and to each other in new ways.
CEOs – told us that they will simplify their operations and products to better manage complexity.
In fact, simplifying needless complexity was seen by many CEOs as a critical element to better coping with the increasing complexity in their environment.
Similar to our CEO Study, we also survey CIOs and produce a regular IBM CIO study
In 2011, we interviewed more than 3,000 CIOs and learned that CIOs and business leaders believe Analytics, Mobility, Virtualization, Cloud and Security are the most important technologies
The CIO study reveals an unprecedented shift toward these technologies to innovate and solve specific business challenges
Analytics is the foundation for driving better insights and decision making across these key technologies
Mobility solutions deliver applications and data to their users when they need it, and on the device they choose
Virtualization is more mainstream and integrated into every day workloads
Cloud computing offers the potential for more efficient access to data, disaster recovery, and the ability to process large amounts of data quickly
Security intelligence solutions address key threats and compliance challenges and enable secure business
In this hypothetical example, an electrical utility might exploit a Systems of Engagement model to extend the reach of their traditional IT applications to customers and other utility workers to
gather outage information,
prioritize responses,
communicate with temporary workers form other utility companies dispatched to help,
and update customers with status on work priorities, locations an estimated times for resumptions of services.
Over time the company learns form the applications they needed to develop and deploy quickly to coordinate their response by integrating them more deeply into their traditional IT systems.
Cloud technology and polyglot development tools and services allowed the utility to quickly develop and deploy the systems of engagement in response to the disaster, bridging them to their systems of record to help in response and customer communication.
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That’s a bit about what we expect from SoftLayer – but we have been hard at work around delivering a world class, differentiated cloud portfolio.
We view the acquisition of SoftLayer as complementary – rapidly expanding IBM’s capabilities through tight linkage of our organic spend and acquisitions combined with our industry expertise and ability to scale globally. This approach is the basis of our growth strategy.
Based on open standards technologies (including OpenStack) and a broad ecosystem of industry partners, IBM has built SmartCloud technologies for every stage of cloud adoption. The value to our clients comes from the interoperability it enables within their own infrastructures. As all our cloud technology is built on top of a common open-standards based reference architecture, its gives our clients flexibility and choice in how they consume cloud technologies. With greater confidence that things will work together with a degree of portability….enabling a hybrid approach.
Our cloud capabilities are organized into 3 simple areas. SmartCloud Foundation, the integrated set of cloud enablement technologies for private and hybrid Clouds. These are technologies that our customers can use to build their own private clouds. SmartCloud Services, the IBM cloud platform designed for enterprise-class service delivery with PaaS/IaaS managed services. IBM SmartCloud service delivery platform is built upon the very same SmartCloud Foundation technologies that our clients are using. And SmartCloud Solutions, our growing list of business and industry solutions on the Cloud offered as SaaS. Capabilities such as Collaboration, B2B Integration, Digital Marketing Optimization… all delivered via SaaS.
SoftLayer brings proven success with cloud-centric born-on-the-web workloads that deliver at Internet scale. The solutions that customers have built run in markets that we don’t typically see at IBM. Markets/segments like
Online gaming
Digital marketing
Social networking / Web apps
Mobile Applications
High performance computing
Big Data / DB Management
And what this tells you is that they deliver a platform that internet centric business will bet and do bet their business on. It’s a testament to how robust this technology is!
That’s a bit about what we expect from SoftLayer – but we have been hard at work around delivering a world class, differentiated cloud portfolio.
We view the acquisition of SoftLayer as complementary – rapidly expanding IBM’s capabilities through tight linkage of our organic spend and acquisitions combined with our industry expertise and ability to scale globally. This approach is the basis of our growth strategy.
Based on open standards technologies (including OpenStack) and a broad ecosystem of industry partners, IBM has built SmartCloud technologies for every stage of cloud adoption. The value to our clients comes from the interoperability it enables within their own infrastructures. As all our cloud technology is built on top of a common open-standards based reference architecture, its gives our clients flexibility and choice in how they consume cloud technologies. With greater confidence that things will work together with a degree of portability….enabling a hybrid approach.
Our cloud capabilities are organized into 3 simple areas. SmartCloud Foundation, the integrated set of cloud enablement technologies for private and hybrid Clouds. These are technologies that our customers can use to build their own private clouds. SmartCloud Services, the IBM cloud platform designed for enterprise-class service delivery with PaaS/IaaS managed services. IBM SmartCloud service delivery platform is built upon the very same SmartCloud Foundation technologies that our clients are using. And SmartCloud Solutions, our growing list of business and industry solutions on the Cloud offered as SaaS. Capabilities such as Collaboration, B2B Integration, Digital Marketing Optimization… all delivered via SaaS.
SoftLayer brings proven success with cloud-centric born-on-the-web workloads that deliver at Internet scale. The solutions that customers have built run in markets that we don’t typically see at IBM. Markets/segments like
Online gaming
Digital marketing
Social networking / Web apps
Mobile Applications
High performance computing
Big Data / DB Management
And what this tells you is that they deliver a platform that internet centric business will bet and do bet their business on. It’s a testament to how robust this technology is!
In the early days, in 2006-2007, SoftLayer focused on traditional hosters, service providers, companies out there buying more traditional hosting.
2007 through about 2010 they saw the explosion of Internet-centric businesses out there. Companies wrapped around social networking, social gaming, the explosion of all things wrapped around Facebook and companies like that.
And then about 24 months ago, they saw the enterprise coming to the market and start buying cloud services en masse and in real dollars.
And this technology is deployed at scale today.
Whether it is at companies like:
Repsol S.A. a Spanish multinational oil and gas company based in Madrid, Spain. It is the 15th largest petroleum refining company according to the Fortune Global 500 list,[3] employing over 40,000 people worldwide.
Or LAN Airlines S.A. a group of South American Airlines based in Santiago, Chile and part of LATAM Airlines Group, Latin America's largest Airline holding.
Companies like that are moving and/or have moved a great portion of their production, infrastructure to the platform at SoftLayer.
Additionally there are exciting, innovative Internet centric companies like Fitbit Inc. and products lie , the Fitbit Tracker, a wireless-enabled wearable device that measures data such as the number of steps walked, quality of sleep, and other personal metrics.
Or Bump an application created by Bump Technologies for the Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems, that allows two smartphone users to physically bump their phones together to transfer contact information, photos, and files to each other over the Internet.
You can look at the rest of these. What do they have in common?
Internet Scale
Innovation
A reliance on the underlying platform.
That says a lot about the technology that SoftLayer delivers!
Referenced Clients from CMO @ SoftLayer and approved for high-level reference:
SaaS:, BaseCase, HotelsCombined
Social: Path, Slideshare
Mobile: Bump, Fitbit, MagmaMobile
Marketing/Digital Media: Struq, Simpli.fi
Games: KIXEYE, Peak Games, 6waves, Garena
Hosting/Service Providers: ZipServers, MidPhase, Distil Networks, MailChimp
Enterprise (if needed): Repsol, LAN Airlines
SaaS:
MailChimp – more than 3 million people use MailChimp to design and send e-mail marketing campaigns. Supported by SoftLayer infrastructure.
Big Data:
10gen – SoftLayer offers bundled solutions with 10gen’s MongoDB deployed on pre-configured servers
PaaS:
Cloudant – provides scalable NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) on SoftLayer’s servers to mobile and web app. developers with big data needs.
Hosting/Service Providers:
XO Communications – uses SoftLayer infrastructure to provide hosted services for some of their customers.
Social:
twitpic – application used for sharing photos and videos in real-time on twitter running on SoftLayer’s servers.
Path – instant messaging app. that is powered by Softlayer infrastructure. Path is integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, and Instagram.
Mobile:
Yelp – global search site used for finding businesses as well as reading and writing reviews. Used by consumers around the world and supported by SoftLayer infrastructure.
Let’s look at some examples of their workload capability further
Many large IT and Telcos need their own IaaS service – and they have used Softlayer APIs and white label to do so, like AT&T
The emergence of big data and hadoop workloads means partnering with leading providers like Mongo/10 gen can bring NoSQl dbs and IaaS to build apps targeting big data workloads
When building solutions, control, billing, and management – such as those offered thru Parallels as a pre-integrated solution
We will use SoftLayer’s partner programs – so let’s look at three of their programs to better understand their capability
Referral
Reseller
Distributors & Strategic
Strategic partner
Channel sales includes inside sales and enterprise sales reps and pro-active, targeting certain
Let’s take a brief look at how to best position SL’s competitive advantage.
There are three areas of advantage over AWS and Rackspace: I/O , Control, and Integrated platform
As with any acquisition of this size, this will be a multi-year journey but want to make it very clear to the market that we will take SoftLayer today - expand and grow.
We want to continue to build a set of partnerships and relationships and have the ease of access that is appropriate for what, in IBM's view, is the SMB, or the enterprise business in our client base. So the beauty of cloud for us, it gives us an extended reach into markets that historically have been harder for us to reach. And we'll do that on a worldwide basis.
From a technical standpoint, we will converge what we have in market with the SoftLayer platform. We'll extend the SoftLayer capabilities to recognize Tier 1 storage and some other capabilities that are relevant to our client base and then bring that forward as a single set of SmartCloud infrastructure services within the SmartCloud organization.
Starting at close we will start the convergence of SmartCloud Services with SoftLayer technology. We will start with SmartCloud Enterprise and provide a solid platform for innovative cloud-centric workloads.
Then we will see other parts of IBM factoring existing or building new SmartCloud Solutions on SmartCloud infrastructure services. You'll see this not just as a GTS platform but as a cross-IBM platform.
Additionally because we are building on OpenStack – other OpenStack technologies from across IBM can be instantiated on SmartCloud infrastructure services.
A year or so out – we will converge the marquee SmartCloud Enterprise+ offering along with the optional managed services into the SmartCloud infrastructure services offering – extending and expanding value – giving customers increased choice and flexibility.
Now if we move above the line… to Go-to-Market.
We will start by keeping the SoftLayer IMS in market while at the same time standing up the SmartCloud Infrastructure Services worldwide executing in local currency and local language – something vital to customers – both enterprise and SMB.
We will work closely with new colleagues in SoftLayer – who as we said earlier we want to keep as independent as possible.
The converged SmartCloud Infrastructure Services will be delivered not just by IBM, but also by partners. Partners like Managed Service Providers (MSP) who aggregate services from multiple providers – delivering value to customers – in SMB but in larger enterprises as well.
We will continue to drive SoftLayer and SmartCloud Infrastructure Services across IBM – as a platform for rapid innovation and transformation.
So getting back to what I said in the beginning this is truly an exciting announcement for IBM as a company and for our customers and partners alike. It’s exciting because it show that IBM is poised to lead in this tectonic shift in computing, just the way we have led out other shifts in our history.
With the acquisition of SoftLayer we are looking to continue to invest to deliver value. To help accelerate our strategy and as we accelerate – we help our customers accelerate the transformational projects that they are eager to launch.
SoftLayer adds technology and when paired with what we have in SmartCloud, expert business and technical services, and the expected solutions on top of the SmartCloud platform – we are poised to lead.
But you can start today. Feel confident that your investment in IBM cloud services will be protected as we integrate SoftLayer capabilities. For SCE customers, improved quality and an accelerated introduction of feature/function will materialize rapidly as SCE is converged with the SoftLayer delivery infrastructure and management toolsets.
Over time we will be converging the SmartCloud Enterprise+ offering with Softlayer. However, the current SCE+ offering is expected to be on the market for an extended period of time, remaining focused on serving the needs of cloud-enabled workloads, and the current roadmap up to and including R1.4 will be executed without change. Post R1.4, we plan to focus any new development on the converged SoftLayer-IBM based infrastructure, bringing to market a unified offering to address the full range of workloads from cloud-native to cloud-enabled.
