In addition to rolling out SCE+, IBM also expanded its geographic footprint for its cloud, which is now available across five continents including in Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil and European data centers. IDC cloud analyst Robert Mahowald says advanced SAP app support combined with a growing geographic footprint are important announcements for enterprise customers looking for cloud services.
"IBM is clearly taking digs at AWS," Mahowald wrote in an e-mail. "The fact that IBM offers comprehensive App Lifecycle and Migration services reinforces this notion. IBM SCE+ is somewhat like AWS's (Elastic Cloud Compute or EC2), but is designed to be a premium, services-driven experience, where AWS is much more self-service."
That will appeal most directly to enterprise customers who are looking for additional support from their vendor, or from current IBM managed hosting customers who may be looking for the additional flexibility an elastically-scalable and subscription-based cloud model provides.
Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.
