IBM Session at Cloud Expo

There is now - or will be next quarter, at least in North America - something called Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud.

It appears to be what other people might call a public cloud but this is IBM and public clouds are so...so, well, so down market like public swimming pools, or Amazon - and not really what Big Blue means, one assumes - so IBM calls this a "commercial cloud service" instead - sort of like the way Tory English refer to, ahem, trade.

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It's targeting the thing at the enterprise and government.

Now realize that IBM has been offering a private cloud solution for development and test behind the client's firewall, built and managed by IBM, since last June, but this is not to be mistaken with that though one might easily do so since that's called IBM Smart Business Development & Test Cloud.

Got that now? They sound alike but they're different; one's on the customer's infrastructure, the other's on IBM's.

The "commercial" widgetry supports Linux - either Red Hat's or Novell's - and Java.

In contrast to Amazon, for one, which uses Xen for virtualization, IBM is going with Red Hat's newfangled KVM widgetry (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization), which is regarded as quite a coup for Red Hat.

IBM says clients can work with their own images as well as images from IBM Mashup Center, Lotus Forms Turbo, WebSphere Portal Server, Lotus Web Content Management and IBM Information Management and WebSphere brands that can be "configured per their selection."

IBM has been beta testing its "commercial cloud service" with an ecosystem of partners in cloud deployment and management (RightScale and Kaavo), cloud security (Navajo Systems), cloud-ified software development (Aviarc, Wavemaker and Corent), testing (VMLogix), performance monitoring (AppFirst), load and performance testing (SOASTA), even e-signatures (Silanis).

It's also got some Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing 1.0 to throw in and means to woo developers with bread and circus games at a new online cloud computing resource center on IBM developerWorks, which claims eight million registered developers, IT professionals and students worldwide.

developerWorks Cloud Computing resources will be the single point of entry to beta and production cloud environments, as well as a place for a host of cloud articles, videos, blogs, hands-on virtual workshops, cloud-focused forums and online communities.

It's IBM's contention that your average enterprise devotes up to 50% of its entire technology infrastructure to development and test, but typically up to 90% of it is idle. It claims its solution can reduce IT labor costs by 50%, reduce provision cycle times from weeks to minutes, eliminate software defects by up to 30%, enable rapid redeployment of environments across multiple IT projects and "drastically" reduce time-to-market.

Early adopters include PayPal.

Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud will roll out globally this year after its U.S. and Canadian launch in Q2.