There is mounting enthusiasm for cloud services in the Asia-Pacific region, and enterprises are building the business case for cloud.
The ultimate aim for enterprises is to build secure but extremely agile ICT infrastructures that will allow them to be nimble and innovative, and to move faster than their competitors. The cloud dividend delivers the highest yield for enterprises if it can help them to achieve that competitive advantage over their peers.
A series of cloud announcements at IBM Impact potentially put clear water between IBM and its competitors in the region. The company gave details of its highly anticipated Cloud Marketplace, which will be driven by role-based service offerings.
In addition, it has launched integration services that help enterprises integrate and orchestrate their complex hybrid cloud environments. More importantly, with BlueMix IBM is building a developer and independent software vendor (ISV) community that will support future innovation for both its marketplace and its MobileFirst strategy.
Cloud has become the central plank for many ICT players’ strategies in the region, but differentiation is extremely difficult. IBM’s move is based on compelling differentiators that will allow it to better engage with cloud buyers. It will also up the ante against Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Rackspace, and a variety of other telecoms service providers across the region.