IBM Blue Box Local poised to bring OpenStack solution to on premise data centers
If you’ve been following the evolution of the IBM Cloud, you’ve noticed that “Big Blue” has recently made several moves to offer hybrid cloud capabilities to clients, both on premise and off. Since acquiring Blue Box in June of this year, IBM has been working hard to unveil an OpenStack on-premise cloud solution, which is finally happening. The new on-premise solution, dubbed IBM Blue Box Local, will utilize many of the features of IBM Cloud OpenStack Services, which it replaces, when it becomes available on November 30.
How will IBM Blue Box Local be implemented?
The first step in implementing IBM Blue Box Local will be a site survey to help determine the necessary deployment capacity. Next, the customer will purchase the necessary hardware as described in a compatibility list. Engineers at IBM will then build the rack and deliver it directly to the customer. Once network connections and power are in place, IBM and Blue Box will then manage the entire infrastructure.
One of the benefits of this solution is the speed with which companies are able to get a private cloud installation up and running. In the past, companies spent months, if not years to develop a viable solution, whereas with IBM Blue Box Local a solution can be implemented in a much shorter period of time.
History of Blue Box
Blue Box has been operating since 2003. The company created an OpenStack private cloud two years ago. Prior to the acquisition, the product ran on hardware located in four data centers scattered throughout the world. While IBM released a similar solution to their Softlayer cloud in September, IBM Blue Box Local can actually be placed inside a customer’s datacenter.
Some companies may be fine with public clouds, but there are others that have large investments in database and system technologies but still want to develop the next generation of their applications within close proximity to their existing workload.
Example use cases for IBM Blue Box Local
Companies who are looking for this type of secure solution can be typically found in industries such as banking or healthcare. These companies want their new applications to communicate with their existing systems, but are weary of moving to a public cloud.
Companies want to avoid using legacy practices to write applications in the same way they did 10-20 years ago. Instead they want to be able to create applications that are cloud based, but still need to interconnect with an existing infrastructure.
Customers don’t want to have to hire an experienced OpenStack team, install the product and then try to figure out how to maintain and manage it. They just want a cloud platform that is able to interact with their existing environment, which is what IBM Blue Box Local will offer.
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