IBM announced its new cloud services platform today, which aims to make it easier for communications service providers (CSPs, which include communication companies like telcos, ISPs, and satellite companies) to take advantage of cloud computing.
Dubbed the “IBM Cloud Service Provider Platform” (creative Big Blue is not), the new platform is “a comprehensive set of hardware, software, and services” that will let CSPs deliver new cloud-based services to their customers. It could potentially let providers launch new partner services in six weeks, instead of six months, and offer partner applications and services like “unified communications, collaboration, field force management and sales tracking and customer relationship management applications.”
Service providers will be able to provision tens of thousands of virtual machines every hour, as well as run and manage millions of virtual machines concurrently. They could create “hundreds or even thousands of new services” quickly and cost-effectively with the platform, the company says.
The cloud platform is built on IBM’s Service Delivery Manager technology. IBM is also working with nine startups — including Corent, deCarta, and Broadsoft — that will provide technology to fuel the services available to public and private clouds. DeCarta, for example, offers a technology crucial to location-based services — it provides “the core functionality for mapping, navigation and local search and connecting base map data and content to the applications, service provider and ultimately the end-user.” DeCarta’s technology could be useful to CSPs for applications like mobile advertising.
The new platform allows IBM to become even more entrenched in the burgeoning cloud computing business.
Photo via mendhak on Flickr
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