IBM speeds up virtual machine set-up to boost cloud computing

LAS VEGAS: IBM took the wraps off four new software products on Tuesday, all designed at pushing companies further down the cloud computing route.

At its Pulse 2011 service management event in Las Vegas, IBM unveiled a beta program for high-speed provisioning of virtual machines (VMs).

“We’re able to get VMs provisioned in a number of seconds now,” said Dennis Quan, director at IBM’s Tivoli China Development Labs. “Even when you up the number of VMs you’re provisioning, you still get the time benefits.”

He added that firms could create dozens of VMs in a matter of minutes, while thousands could be set up in less than an hour.

This development would enable firms to make better use of available computing resources, Quan explained.

“It will change the mindset of users, they’ll be more willing to relinquish the resources when they’re not using them as they know they can get them again quickly,” he said.

IBM also released Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.2, aimed at improving data centre resource management. The software is designed for large enterprises that have hundreds of thousands of virtual images, which all need to be patched and run across different operating systems and middleware.

“The primary function is to enable users to automate provisioning and patch management tasks to make operations in datacentres run more efficiently,” Quan said.

Quan listed various hypervisors supported by Tivoli Provisioning Manager, including IBM’s PowerVM, along with KVM, VMWare and Xen. However he refused to confirm whether Microsoft’s Hyper-V is supported so those firms running Microsoft’s hypervisor will need to wait for IBM clarification on that.

The two final technologies unveiled at Pulse were a centralised management platform for hybrid clouds, allowing firms to control resources in both private and public clouds; and Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments, adding data protection and security for VMs.

Speaking on the product announcements, Ric Telford, vice president of IBM Cloud Services, said that cloud as an IT service delivery method is still in the minority at present. He added that the real value will come when firms start using industry-specific clouds, such as IBM’s Collaborative Care cloud aimed at healthcare.

These industry clouds would be based on a common cloud architecture, but the applications and data would be tailored for a sector-specific problem.

Despite making a big push around the cloud this week and tagging it onto most of the Pulse announcements, IBM was keen to downplay the importance of cloud as a term, with Telford maintaining that cloud computing will no longer be referred to within five years.

“What we call the cloud today is going to be so normal that we’ll probably call it the internet,” he said.