Before we start with cloud computing and the IBM® SmartCloud® portfolio, let's first briefly look at the history of IBM. International Business Machines Corporation (or IBM) is a leading technology and service company which has been delivering innovative technology solutions for over 100 years. IBM serves clients in over 170 countries, has over 4,00,000 employees worldwide, is the third most valuable brand worldwide, and has delivered the most U.S. patents for 20 years in a row. To quote Ginni Rometty, Chief Executive Officer, IBM:
"IBM is an innovation company. We pursue continuous transformation both in what we do and how we do it—always remixing to higher value in our offerings and skills, in our operations and management practices, and in the transformational capabilities we deliver to our clients."
Over that last few years, IBM has been heavily engaged on the Smarter Planet® strategy, which recognizes that, each and every day, the world is getting more:
Instrumented: Computers in any shape and size are nowadays everywhere. Think of smartphones, home automation, electric cars, and alternative power sources such as windmills and solar panels.
Interconnected: Exchanging data to work together. Think of an on-demand streaming video on your television set, using your smartphone to control your lights or central heating, but also cities being able to control traffic better using data from surveillance cameras and sensors in the road.
Intelligent: Using the data gathered (interconnected) from the many sensors (instruments) around us to get information and even new insights that enable us all to do things smarter.
In 2011 IBM announced the Smarter Computing IT framework, as part of the Smarter Planet strategy, which is based on three key principles: designing systems for data, optimizing systems for specific workloads, and managing systems in using a cloud computing architecture. As the title suggests, this book will only cover the cloud computing part of the Smarter Computing IT framework.
All IBM cloud computing solutions are bundled in the IBM® SmartCloud® portfolio which will be elaborated further on in this chapter. From the next chapter onwards, we will focus specifically on the IBM® SmartCloud® Enterprise in particular, as this public cloud service allows us to example many of the characteristics that are essential to cloud computing.