IBM Hitches Wagon on OpenStack Cloud

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Adding more momentum to OpenStack’s meteoric rise, IBM is reportedly centering its enterprise cloud computing efforts on the open source cloud computing platform.

AllThingsD’s Arik Hesseldahl reported today that similar to how Big Blue embraced the Linux open source OS for server computing, it is looking to OpenStack to serve as the foundation for its cloud computing offerings. “Big Blue announced today that all of its cloud services and software will be based on an open cloud architecture,” he wrote.

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While a big endorsement for the OpenStack Foundation, there is no shortage of IT giants that are popularizing the technology.

In a few short years, OpenStack went from a joint project from NASA and Rackspace to one of the leading engines of innovation in cloud computing. It has attracted a long list of supporters that include industry mainstays and technology startups that are busily commercializing OpenStack-based tools and services.

Last year, the OpenStack Foundation published a list of supporters that not only reflected a major windfall for the group — namely, millions of dollars in donations — but also turned it into the envy of the IT industry.

IBM joined other big names like AT&T, HP, Canonical, Nebula, Rackspace, Red Hat and SUSE as Platinum members, OpenStack’s highest tier. No less impressive is the Gold tier, which includes Cisco, Dell, and Yahoo, among several others. Among startups, companies like Piston are helping to flesh out the OpenStack cloud management ecosystem.

Now IBM is signaling that the IT giant is making a bigger push toward OpenStack-powered infrastructures, starting with private clouds.

Early inklings arrived in January when Dennis Quan, VP of SmartCloud at IBM, revealed that his company’s SmartCloud Enterprise would be powered by OpenStack. Today, the company is announcing the SmartCloud Monitoring Application Insight product, which will bring performance and availability monitoring of cloud applications to OpenStack-based private clouds, reported Hesseldahl.

At TechNewsWorld, Rob Enderle said that IBM is spotlighting its OpenStack-based SmartCloud Orchestrator. “IBM just announced SmartCloud Orchestrator — a massive open source initiative designed to help companies better balance public and private cloud resources and even switch vendors,” he wrote.

IBM isn’t the only industry heavyweight to roll out OpenStack cloud solutions, nor the first.

Last year, HP unveiled Converged Cloud, a suite of public and hybrid cloud services that incorporate the open source cloud platform. A month later, the company flipped the switch on HP Cloud Services, a suite of public cloud services that run atop an OpenStack-powered infrastructure.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.