IBM gets all of the world's cloud vendors to pay them a services fee to submit their services to a series of tests that validate (or not) whether the cloud is resiliant, secure and scalable. Should the vendor's offering pass, they get to put a "Resiliant Cloud" logo on their web pages, etc.
Customers looking for resiliant, secure and scalable cloud infrastructure then can select from the pool of "Resiliant Cloud" offerings to build their specific cloud-based solutions. Oh, and they can hire IBM services to help them distinguish when to go outside for their cloud infrastructure, and when to convert their existing infrastructure. I'm sure IBM will give a balanced analysis as to the technology options here...
"IBM has been pretty quiet about its cloud efforts. In part because it didn’t want to hack off large customers buying a ton of IBM servers by competing with them. The computing giant hasn’t been pushing its own cloud business until a half-hearted announcement at the end of July, about a month and half after a company exec had told me IBM didn’t really want to advertise its cloud services."She goes on to note, however, that IBM has some great things in the works, including a research project in China that shows great promise. That's welcome news, and I look forward to IBM being a major player on the cloud computing stage again. However, this announcement is just an attempt at making IBM the "godfather" of the cloud market, and that's not interesting in the least.
Still, I bet if you want to be an IBM strategic partner, you'd better get on board with the program. Amazon, are you going to pay the fee? Microsoft? Google? Salesforce.com? Anyone?
