IBM Announces New BlueMix Services to Help Developers Build Applications in the Cloud

LAS VEGAS, April 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that more than 30 additional cloud services are available in BlueMix, its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to help developers quickly integrate applications and speed deployment of new cloud services.  Additionally, IBM is launching BlueMix Garages, collaborative locations where developers can create new apps on BlueMix, learn new development skills, and access IBM's developer ecosystem.

With this announcement, IBM is accelerating the pace at which cloud computing will transform global industries.

Built on open standards and leveraging Cloud Foundry, BlueMix has made major advancements since being announced in February, including:

• Cloud integration services to enable a secure connection between an organization's public applications and private data
• Swift, secure and fast connections, via the cloud, between Internet of Things and machine to machine device to store, query and visualize data
• Data and analytics-as-a-service to allow the rapid design and scale of applications that turn Big Data into competitive intelligence
• DevOps services that support the complete developer lifecycle

IBM is leveraging BlueMix's foundation on SoftLayer for this expansion, combining the strength of IBM's middleware software with third-party and open technologies to create an integrated development experience in the cloud. Using an open cloud environment, BlueMix helps both born-on-the-web and enterprise developers build applications with their choice of tools. With the ability to easily combine a variety of services and APIs from across the industry to compose, test and scale custom applications, developers will be able to cut deployment time from months to minutes.

"The adoption rate of BlueMix has been nothing short of phenomenal since being announced only a few short weeks ago," said Steve Robinson, General Manager of IBM Cloud Platform Services. "Rapidly growing numbers of beta participants are embracing our model of extending their existing assets and services into a cloud-based, open-source development platform, allowing our clients to bridge between the tools they are planning for the future and the workloads and services they use today to get them to market faster."

In the first eight weeks of BlueMix's open beta launch, IBM has seen rapid adoption of the open platform with key clients and partners such as GameStop, Pitney Bowes, Continental Automotive and start-ups including EyeQ.

"BlueMix has helped us grow and scale our resources at a rapid pace, assisting us in deploying a cost-effective solution to our clients that helps us get to market faster," said Michael Garel, CEO and Founder of EyeQ. "With BlueMix, we are able to reduce the amount of time spent on monthly server maintenance by 85 percent, and turn our attentions back to greater innovation."

BlueMix Helps Build and Integrate Apps Quickly
IBM's new BlueMix services are designed to help businesses rapidly transform using Big Data, mobile and social technologies in the cloud. Some of the new BlueMix services include:

Cloud Integration services to securely connect and integrate an organization's applications and information in the cloud. Developers can use pre-defined connectors for accelerated integration, or develop custom APIs as needed to easily and securely tie back into systems of record behind their firewall. Integrated API management capabilities provide an easy mechanism to publish self-service APIs, that can be shared with the broader API economy. This allows developers to mix cloud-based PaaS, third party cloud applications, and on-premises systems behind security gateways, moving between cloud and on-premises systems in a hybrid, integrated environment. 

Internet of Things services allowing developers to register and connect networked devices such as microprocessors and embedded machine to machine sensors to the cloud, easily aggregating and reacting to data and events in real time. Organizations can build applications which efficiently manage, analyze, visualize, and interact with the massive quantities of temporal and spatial data generated by vehicles, wearables, mobile phones, cameras, computers, sensors and other intelligent devices.

Data and Analytics services for developers to deliver data-centric mobile, web-scale applications. With these new services, including geospatial, time series, predictive scoring, and reporting, developers can easily create sophisticated applications that provide real-time actionable insight so that organizations can predict outcomes and make better business decisions. For example, a developer could create an application that integrates sensor data, location data, weather data and usage trends from a network of equipment to identify and avoid emerging maintenance issues. In addition, new data masking, discovery and audit capabilities help developers create applications with built-in data privacy and security.

DevOps services enabling developers, IT departments and business teams with an open, integrated rapid development environment that scales from individual developers to enterprise teams. The DevOps Continuous Integration service will provide end-to-end "build" capabilities to speed changes through the development process, DevOps Mobile Quality Assurance (MQA) will help analyze user sentiment to spot problems before they go viral, and the Monitoring and Analytics service will identify application problems during development - leveraging analytics to help applications achieve availability and performance goals. In addition, DevOps will include a new RapidApp service that requires no coding, using visual tools to expand the scope of web and business applications developers can create.

BlueMix Garage Speeds Development of Cloud Applications
IBM also announced the launch of BlueMix Garages - physical, collaborative spaces for developers, product managers and designers to collaborate with IBM experts to rapidly innovate and deliver new cloud applications to be deployed onto BlueMix. The first IBM BlueMix Garage will be located in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood – home to more startups per square foot than anywhere in the world. The Garage will sit in Galvanize, a startup hub which will provide a shared home to approximately 200 San Francisco startups by the end of 2014. Working side-by-side with IBM consultants, partners and entrepreneurs, Garage users will transform application development with modern cloud technologies and highly disciplined agile processes.

Underpinned by a strong ecosystem, IBM is accelerating the pace at which cloud computing will transform global industries. Currently, IBM's education, mentoring and innovation initiatives reach more than four million software developers worldwide, and more than 1,000 startups across retail, healthcare, finance, agriculture, automotive and more. The continued growth of the BlueMix community, as well as launches of additional BlueMix Garages, will help provide this network with the skills, innovation and tools needed to leverage the power of cloud to revolutionize the use of mobile, big data and more.

Preview of BlueInsight for Business Users

IBM also previewed a project codenamed BlueInsight, which provides a cloud-based, collaborative workspace experience for BlueMix designed to help knowledge workers solve business problems faster.  Two core elements of BlueInsight include Data Refinery services that help users identify and integrate all types of data from a wide variety of enterprise, cloud and third party sources to create enriched, trusted information; and a service codenamed Catalyst Insight, an automated analytic discovery solution to give those without analytics expertise the ability to surface predictive intelligence from their data.

About IBM Cloud Computing
IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with 40,000 industry experts. Since its acquisition in 2013, IBM SoftLayer has served 4,500 new cloud clients. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more than 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM's public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.  Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud.

Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.  Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

For more information on IBM Impact, visit www.ibm.com/press/ibmimpact2014.

Media Contact:
Erin Lehr
IBM Communications
[email protected] 
ph: 832-766-7625

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SOURCE IBM