IBM is expanding its cloud services to allow organisations to develop and test applications on IBM cloud infrastructure as well as private, internal clouds. The company also announced a partner ecosystem of vendors providing tools to help manage cloud-based development lifecycles.

The service, called Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud, is set to be available in the second quarter for customers in North America, and will roll out globally during the rest of 2010.

According to IBM, many enterprises devote up to 50 per cent of their entire infrastructure to development and testing, but much of this is underutilised. Using cloud-based environments instead can help reduce costs by 50 per cent, improve quality and drastically reduce time to market, according to the firm.

Organisations can expand on internal development and test efforts with instant access to resources through IBM's cloud delivery model, backed by IBM software and application lifecycle management capabilities.

Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud is built on Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualisation platform, and supports Linux and Java applications. The platform is supported by new Rational Software delivery lifecycle tools, known as Rational Delivery Services for Cloud Computing

However, IBM said it is also building an ecosystem of partners to provide cloud computing tools, including management and provisioning of cloud resources by RightScale and Kaavo, and performance monitoring from AppFirst.

IBM already offers a private cloud solution for development and testing, introduced last year, whereby the company deploys and manages a cloud service behind the customer's own firewall.

Today's announcement extends its portfolio to three delivery models, with the new IBM cloud model joined by IBM CloudBurst, a pre-integrated set of hardware, storage, virtualisation and network kit to allow clients to rapidly deploy their own private cloud environment.