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Information Technology in Transition |
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| IBM Open Cloud Architecture - System of Interaction | Mobile Devices | IBM MobileFirst to IBM Mobile |
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IBM Cloud Platform: Roll-out
Cloud computing is shifting the emphasis from locally managed server-client installations to externally located web-accessible computing centers consisting of thousands of servers. The development platforms, languages, and scalable databases reflect competitive forces of Fortune 1000 software and hardware companies, open source software, and intellectual property laws in a global economy. The established leaders and new entrants are implementing public, private, and hybrid clouds. Although many clouds operate in isolation; there are international standards, data structures, and formats which allow cloud interaction and data/application portability.
| Hardware | Architecture | Software | ||||||
| Governance | Security | Service Management | ||||||
| Compound | → | Training | → | Specialized | ||||
| Technologies | Services | Training | ||||||
The advantages associated with an integrated cloud include: 1- Moving data directly from one cloud to another cloud without having to download and upload the data. 2- Storing the same data in multiple clouds for backup. 3- Coordinating computation in multiple clouds. Interfaces are being developed so that data communication and synchronization can occur across different clouds. As services are able to run on platforms, the cloud becomes more central to application development by providing reliability and delivery of value to customers.
The appropriate mix and selection of hardware, software, and cloud computing technologies will be determined by a combination of Moore's Law applied to semiconductor technology and storage, budgetary constraints, and regulations imposed by national-state governments and economic trade zone authorities - e.g. European Union. The degree of success will be highly dependent upon the ability of organizational enterprise to educate and train its employees to maintain, develop, and migrate its computer systems.
IBM Open Cloud Architecture - System of Interaction
The IBM cloud architecture is based upon a composition of development frameworks, open standard formats, and APIs: application programming interfaces. IBM’s private, public, and hybrid clouds have a common architecture being developed to promote portability. Open source software addresses issues with vendor lock-in and competing in a growing market.
In 2013, IBM bought SoftLayer Technologies for $2 billion. In 2014, billion dollar investments were made in data center operations and software development; there are cloud dedicated centers in 15 countries. IBM has been re-architecting its cloud business with a PaaS to accelerate web development and port existing enterprise applications to its SoftLayer platform. The middleware is through pre-defined software patterns for extending on-premises applications to hybrid off-premises cloud environments. IBM Platform LSF: Load Sharing Facility Platform software also is available. IBM installed OpenStack on its SoftLayer cloud services. Its clients can move workloads between private clouds, running IBM’s OpenStack and the SoftLayer cloud. A developer builds and tests an application on SoftLayer which then can be moved in-house for deployment. Or an in-house application that outgrows its local infrastructure can be scaled onto IBM’s SoftLayer platform servers.
IBM Bluemix delivers software as composable services within a platform as a service. Bluemix is built on open source Cloud Foundry. 1 New apps can be started by composing pre-integrated services into applications; the goal is accelerated development cycles. The Bluemix initiative provides software development tools and incentives for attracting outside programmers to make cloud applications for corporations. IBM strategic acquisitions include Cloudant and Compose. Cloudant is a DBaaS: Database as a Service provider for developing CouchDB-based database services - complex mobile and web applications for large organizations. Compose offers several open source database options for basic lightweight applications which can be scaled with management tooling and instrumentation. 2 The shift to cloud-based revenue flows is a challenge to IBM's traditional sales model. With the growth of the market happening in newer areas, where IBM's visibility to potential clients is lower, sustaining revenue in these areas could be problematic.
In conjunction with participation in open standards committees and open source projects, IBM has invested both in the OpenStack - infrastructure as a service and Cloud Foundry platform as service projects. IBM is building a stable of developer services aimed at mobile, web apps, integration, DevOps, and data management. A style of cloud-based application development has emerged where developers combine systems of record and engagement. Cloud computing is an avenue of innovation for the IBM client base. The assumption is that IBM will continue making available to developers its suites of software as a service-based business applications as composable API-based services, including Watson. IBM’s largest investment for growth has been in hardware, software, and services for corporate customer’s data centers. Since 2005, IBM has spent over $24 billion in the data analytics business; two-thirds were for acquisitions. An immense and increasing amount of data has been coming from databases, sensors, smartphones, the web, and social networks. There are industries - airlines, railroad transportation, banking, and finance where IBM can improve its customer’s bottom line by analyzing and reporting data for cost control and increasing sales. There will be issues in off-premises cloud processing compliance which will need to be addressed; this includes SOX: Sarbanes-Oxley Act, PCI: Payment Card Industry, and HIPAA: Accountability Act regulations for personal identities, financial information, and healthcare data. Innovation and personalization can be done by programming staff or third parties. And there continue to be new regulations such as - CCPA: California Consumer Privacy Act / CPRA: California Privacy Rights Act, CISA: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and SOC: Security Operation Centers.
The European Union's GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation took effect on May 25, 2018. It applies to any business that handles the personal data of European residents. The rules cover almost anything that can be linked to an individual: addresses, credit card numbers, travel records, religion, web search history, computer ID codes, biometric data and more. It will take years for Europe's justice system to clarify what it all means. Each country retains discretion under GDPR; there could be differences which force companies with operations across Europe to comply with multiple potentially contradictory privacy regimes. Any company that uses personal data of EU residents must certify that processes minimize impact on privacy rights. This applies even if it has no physical presence in the region.
IBM was slow to grasp the significance of cloud computing which has the potential to displace big parts of the company’s business of selling hardware, software, and services. As the largest supplier, IBM has the most to lose when companies move from traditional data center computing to cloud alternatives. IBM faces competition in the cloud market - Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, HP Enterprise, and VMware - Dell Technologies. IBM has reported significant growth in its cloud business; however, most has been from private clouds with companies delivering services to employees from their own data centers. It has fared less well in public cloud services, in which multiple customers share the same pool of resources. According to a Gartner study, IBM offers less of the features required by mid-market and enterprise companies than Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. 3 The transformation of the IBM business model and concentration on faster growing strategic imperatives has not been reflected in an increased valuation in its stock price.
In the fourth quarter 2018, IBM acquired Red Hat Inc. for approximately $33 billion. IBM has been unable to compete broadly with the hyperscale cloud companies: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In the worldwide cloud infrastructure market, IBM had only 1.9% share of revenue in 2017. The deal for Red Hat is a key component in positioning IBM as a trusted partner of businesses that are moving to the cloud, but are leery of becoming dependent on a single cloud supplier. The IBM cloud strategy is to supply both hardware and software for companies to build their own private clouds with IBM Cloud - SoftLayer public and hybrid cloud alternatives. Red Hat is a leading provider of open source software and services that help companies bridge different platforms. The Red Hat business model offers technical support, quality control, software tools and a forum for collaboration. For IBM, Red Hat’s Linux and other software assets represent an opportunity to sell products to corporate software developers who are building complex applications. Red Hat OpenShift lets software developers build programs that run in containers that can run on multiple cloud computing platforms, such as Amazon and Microsoft, as well as in-house data centers. IBM and Red Hat will provide a path to manage and secure both private clouds and links to multiple public clouds.
Mobile Devices
Mobile devices, web information, and social media innovations are converging to impact business models and the centralized management function of the information technology department. The mobile experience is eclipsing the desktop experience and the large number of mobile device types increasingly has been disrupting the web browser uniformity with the Microsoft Windows family of desktop operating systems. Mobile devices coupled with cloud computing have changed the architecture of computing to include cloud-client. Cloud computing platforms will become a central access and control point for the client. There will be tradeoffs to be made between the use of native mobile device operating systems and HTML5 web browser alternatives.
| Single- | Cross- | ||||||
| Platform | Enterprise, Cloud | Platform | |||||
| and Desktop Integration | |||||||
| Native | Operational Strategies | Web | |||||
| Apps | Browser Apps | ||||||
| Device Form Factors | |||||||
| Hardware | Hybrid | ||||||
| Device Platform | Mobile Apps | ||||||
Consumer driven forces are challenging enterprise information technology and application development. Mobile applications now outnumber those for static deployment. End user expectations are affecting IT. Workers are expecting access from any device, from anywhere. They typically own between three and four devices today. Screen size, bandwidth, and database design issues on mobile devices present challenges to running applications coded for full screen desktop computers.
User requirements for mobile apps include: fast page load, reliability, and user interface acceptance. Mobile development requires changes in the conventional architecture: programming model, platform, and language. In order to migrate an investment in desktops and laptops to mobile devices, service oriented architecture can be applied to modularize and resize the user interface into chunks of relevant data presented in a logical sequence. Google Android is the most widely used open source mobile operating system platform. The leading commercial platforms are Apple iOS and MS Windows 10 - Phone and Surface. Browser and hybrid apps can run natively on mobile runtimes.
IBM MobileFirst to IBM Mobile
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In 2013, IBM launched MobileFirst for enterprise mobile application development with a full IDE: integrated development environment, a back-end system for security, notifications, analytics, distribution and version management. Microsoft Corporation acquired the Xamarin mobile app development platform in 2016. Although popular, Xamarin is not the only option for the front end. The back end is different and there are strategic infrastructure decisions and programming language choices. Mobile cloud services can be coded in Java or PHP. IBM cloud products can be used on the back end with virtual machines or defined microservices architecture. There can be shortcomings with enterprise-grade development: security, ad hoc approaches for notifications, integration third-party analytics, and release management tools into an existing platform.
There has been a change in the IBM strategy within its Bluemix and mobile cloud platforms. MobileFirst was rebranded to IBM Mobile and designed as a back-end API and suite of web apps tools exclusive to Bluemix. Employing a combination of PaaS with IaaS: infrastructure as a service, IBM Bluemix has been positioned for both mobile cloud services. Xamarin enables developers to create native cross-platform apps for iOS and Android using C#, and IBM supports the Microsoft .NET ecosystem. This allows IBM’s enterprise client base to use the Xamarin app-building toolset with IBM Mobile.
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