Kategorie: technology

IBM Cloud as-a-service revenue up by 32 percent

In its second-quarter earnings released Tuesday, IBM posted yet another strong quarter for cloud, with 15 percent growth year over year and a total of $3.9 billion in revenue in the quarter ($15.1 billion over the past 12 months).
Particularly strong was IBM as-a-service offerings, which saw a 32 percent year-over-year boost and an annual exit run rate of $8.8 billion.
“In the second quarter, we strengthened our position as the enterprise cloud leader and added more of the world’s leading companies to the IBM Cloud,” said Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty. Clients including Lloyds Banking Group, American Airlines, Bombardier, BMW, Comcast Business and NVIDIA started or expanded work with IBM Cloud.
For more about IBM Cloud revenue, including how strategic imperatives generated big growth, check out the infographic below.

 
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Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

EVRY and IBM partner to accelerate cloud adoption

For some businesses, cloud adoption has been a complex process. It isn’t something they feel confident doing alone. They usually need some help.
Located in Oslo, Norway, EVRY ASA is a business solutions and consulting company that serves financial institutions, national public sector entities, municipalities and health authorities in the public and private sectors. EVRY’s core strategy is to be close to its customers, wherever they are. The company has 50 offices distributed in the largest cities in the Nordics.
EVRY’s customers want modern solutions and services, which include cloud services. The company wanted to simplify an increasingly complex world for its customers, so it began to develop cloud services and data centers.
Moving to the cloud
When EVRY started to build its own cloud solutions, it soon became clear that it would take time to do that. Additionally, it was a significant financial investment.
EVRY looked to accelerate its transformation into cloud services based on a partnership with another provider. The company realized that, from a local point of view, it was difficult to handle global competition. EVRY combines its strong local knowledge and presence with IBM`s global cloud capabilities.
EVRY chose IBM as its cloud partner because of the methodology and the competencies that IBM has in helping customers move from traditional IT into the cloud. This strategic move allows EVRY to focus on being a customer-centric organization with focus on value-added services and solutions built on leading technology.
Besides, EVRY has worked with IBM across the Nordic region since the mainframe era in the 1970s. It has been a strong partnership over the years.
Creating a cloud partnership with IBM
EVRY and IBM entered into a long-term cloud partnership that has been very well received by customers.
It is essential to provide local infrastructure services for regulatory reasons, so EVRY’s private cloud offering to its local market is based on IBM Bluemix, which is implemented in EVRY data centers.
With IBM, EVRY can keep up with the “functionality race.” Public cloud vendors are releasing hundreds of new functionalities every year, such as APIs, integrations, management, reports and so on. Bluemix enables EVRY to develop these types of new functionalities easily and quickly.
Helping customers succeed with cloud adoption
The vast majority of EVRY customers have made large investments over a long period of time in legacy business apps. Cloud adoption requires a shift in thinking and time. Taking care of customers’ legacy environments and offering them state-of-the-art cloud services through the partnership with IBM is EVRY’s key objective.
IBM Cloud provides the resiliency and security needed to run customers’ mission-critical workloads.
EVRY initially moved 20,000 public sector, banking and healthcare workloads to the hybrid cloud.
Expanding the partnership
EVRY is now expanding its successful partnership with IBM to regional and small-to-medium-enterprise customers. What this will mean is quicker time to market for new cloud-based services and leading-edge infrastructure platforms.
The ability to make use of its strong local presence and knowledge while also supporting with global resources puts EVRY in a unique position while enabling the company to compete internationally.
Transforming with confidence
EVRY customers can move mission-critical workloads to the right cloud with confidence that resiliency and security have been properly addressed. Customers of all sizes benefit from faster time to market for world‑class services that offer a flexible framework for transformation.
For example, Posten Norge has selected EVRY to provide IT infrastructure, including dedicated cloud solutions based on IBM cloud technology, combining scalable, cloud-based capacity with secure data storage at EVRY’s data center in Norway. This unique concept makes businesses more competitive, flexible and able to accelerate their digital transformation without compromising security.
A new agreement between Telenor and EVRY includes a dedicated cloud solution, infrastructure operations and data center services to support Telenor’s digital transformation. The agreement covers the delivery of dynamic infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and modern storage solutions to support the group’s need for a secure, stable and flexible platform for its critical business applications.
Discover more about the partnership between EVRY and IBM.
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Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Taking your business to the cloud with IBM Z

IBM just unveiled the world’s most powerful transaction mainframe system with breakthrough pervasive encryption technology. The IBM z14 features the industry’s fastest microprocessor, and offers a scalable system structure that delivers a 35 percent capacity increase for traditional workloads and up to 35 percent capacity increase for Linux workloads compared to the z13.
The new z14 is incredibly fast and efficient. It is the world’s most powerful transaction system, capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day.
I know that many enterprises rely on IBM Hybrid Cloud software to enable these transactions and business processes. That’s why we ensured that our key software and cloud services will support the advancements that z14 provides.
Delivering exceptional value to a digital business
In today’s multicloud environment, the mainframe plays a pivotal role. Companies that want to benefit from the tremendous encryption and transactional power of z14 need a cloud partner that can harness the application and data clients have invested in IBM Z. IBM Cloud offerings are ready today to help you maximize your investment and gain a competitive edge.
From my years in the IT industry, I know how incredibly important it is to integrate your applications and data. Here are some highlights for how IBM Hybrid Cloud offerings can take your business to the next level with IBM z14.
WebSphere Application Server and IBM Z mainframes run Java workloads 50 percent faster than x86 alternatives. WAS enables scaling up/out, using Docker containers in a single system. WAS for z/OS also benefits from running on z/OS, a hardware and software platform with unsurpassed availability, performance and security.
DevOps for IBM Z transforms enterprise software delivery through planning, development, testing and operations. With application insight, our cognitive DevOps solutions on Z enable clients to provide personalized compelling user experiences. It unlocks the potential of data—both structured and unstructured—so clients can gain powerful insights on DevOps activities.
With API Connect, businesses can leverage APIs created through z/OS Connect, and can expose and manage them across and beyond the organization to speed internal development and reach external developers. In addition, businesses can manage, publish, and promote representational state transfer (REST) APIs created within the mainframe inside and outside the company.
IBM z14 comes with advanced encryption, and IBM MQ works to enhance end-to-end data encryption in flight and at rest as well as ensuring the data connection for blockchain interactions. With IBM Z and MQ, data moving around the business including across multiple platforms become  secure.
Operational Decision Manager on IBM Z can augment or supplement transaction processing, in real-time and at scale. It will also externalize business logic to increase flexibility and quickly respond to rule changes. IBM Z mainframe applications are modernized with ODM, a decision automation platform that both IT and business-line leaders can intuitively use.
Aspera enables Linux on Z applications to transfer large files and data sets at maximum speed over global WANs from z Systems to cloud and other on-premises infrastructure with built-in encryption. Aspera also works with MQ applications running on Linux on Z to send large files securely and quickly without the waiting.
Put IBM Z power to work
The challenges facing today’s business can seem overwhelming. What you need is the right hardware and software partner that can make sense of your digital transformation. We’ve just scratched the surface of the potential available to you and your enterprise.
I encourage you to take advantage of upcoming blogs and webinars where you will be able to learn more about our offerings and how they combine with the new IBM z14 to form an unbeatable, industry-leading solution.
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Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Empower your data with App Connect on Bluemix

Earlier this month, we launched App Connect as a service on Bluemix.  Why? We are aiming to meet the needs caused by a significant shift in the way modern organizations develop data-driven applications. Companies are looking to increase efficiency and productivity while also managing common challenges ranging from skill shortages to stagnant budgets. App Connect on Bluemix aims to address both sides of this equation.
 Data-driven success with App Connect
Data is the cornerstone of a successful business. Companies strive to capture, nurture and safeguard data stores as they seek to gain the edge on competitors. But the real value of data comes from the ability to utilize it effectively. A business must have the capacity to analyze the information they have and then act on it, quickly and effectively. In turn this drives increased efficiency, improved productivity and most crucially, a better customer experience.
For today’s business leader, the cloud provides an almost endless list of software as a service (SaaS) solutions that help them effectively utilise their data, from sales to marketing and analytics. Many of these applications are highly valued for their intuitive user experience, their affordability, the speed at which they are updated to meet changing demands and the relative ease with which they can be deployed. It’s for the same reasons that many business leaders are now looking to their IT departments to develop bespoke ways of harnessing and sharing data in the form of application-based services.
App Connect on Bluemix empowers your developers
Bluemix provides developers with instant access to the services they need to build, test, change and deploy complex applications. The cloud platform brings together an ever-growing palette of services from IBM and third-party providers, across mobile, IoT, cognitive and more. Bluemix empowers developers with a rich toolbox from which to build their apps. The speed at which these apps can be developed and deployed, coupled with the ease of working on a single platform, mirrors the qualities that many users like about SaaS applications.
Building effective apps is only part of the story. Businesses see the greatest value when they connect these all of these services together. IBM App Connect provides an intuitive, web-based tool to automate workflows and integrate data, apps and APIs across hybrid cloud environments. We designed the user experience to support a range of roles and needs, from simple, trigger-action flows across cloud apps to multi-step flows requiring sophisticated data transformation and mapping.
Integrate apps on Bluemix
By providing App Connect as a Bluemix service, developers can now not only build and manage bespoke applications, but also they can integrate them with other applications—on or off the Bluemix platform. In turn Bluemix brings tangible benefits to App Connect users, including powerful monitoring and analytics tools, instant access to services including Watson and OpenWhisk, and the ability to share integrated applications and services with other users in the company.
For more information about App Connect on Bluemix and to get started, visit our webpage.
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Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

5 ways cloud services can help you meet your marketing goals

CMOs are under increased pressure to show tangible return for their marketing spend while delivering on an expanded customer agenda. That means providing a consistent, high-quality experience across an ever-more layered omnichannel environment. As anyone wearing a marketing hat can testify, that takes some juggling. To keep those balls moving, marketing leaders need efficient processes and targeted solutions.
The problem is most don’t have the kind of time needed to pump new life into aging systems or secure the talent and resources to build sophisticated, customer-centered processes in-house.
That’s one reason why specialized cloud services are catching on. Business processes as a service, or BPaaS, are expertly configured process layers that sit on top of an organization’s existing cloud system. Just about any cloud platform will work with BPaaS, be it software as a service, platform as a service or infrastructure as a service.
Although a relatively new arrival in the cloud suite, BPaaS has already found a hungry audience. Research and Markets forecasts the global BPaaS market could exceed $7 billion in value by 2018, and this from a running start of just $1 billion in 2013. We expect marketers will have their hands up for a healthy slice of that business. Here are five reasons why BPaaS might just become a CMO’s best friend:
1.  Improve customer service provisioning across channels: An effective BPaaS customer service system can help marketers respond more uniformly – by aggregating customer data, flagging common issues, cataloging client service histories, and quickly sharing, refining and pushing solutions across channels.
2. Deliver business analytics at the point of impact: Specialized processes can serve up detailed customer information with just a few clicks, allowing marketing teams to understand which stages of the purchasing decision-making process matter most to different value segments. For example, the consumer electronics company Philips began using BPaaS to differentiate its  smart TV called TP Vision. The cloud offering helps Philips capture and analyze data as customers interact with the TV. Marketing teams then use those insights to serve up tailored programming and make recommendations.
3. Optimize digital media spend: Marketers need to know how much to spend, how to split that spend across geographies and business lines, how to divide it across channels and touch points, and how to pull together the right mix of interactions for a given segment or campaign. BPaaS processes can help CMOs tailor their Marketing Mix Modeling to determine spend effectiveness and ROI based on campaigns across each channel.
4. Capitalize on point-of-sale insights: Integrated processes capture and relay transactional information to inform everything from procurement to promotions and can do so far more easily and cost-effectively than most legacy environments allow. The same processes can deliver targeted promotions to buyers, gather survey data, and feed the information collected to relevant parties in the business, often within minutes.
5. Scale up and down as demand dictates: BPaaS allows sales staff to be more effective while on the go. This portability gives organizations the breathing room to take on more business and produce quality results faster, making for a much healthier bottom line.
With CMOs increasingly called on to account for their marketing spend, BPaaS models allow marketers to minimize capital investment and use services on an as-needed basis at a fixed and thus predictable rate. That lets marketing teams pilot and experiment new digital media, sales and campaign capabilities without the investment risk such innovation typically required.
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Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud