IBM updates cloud products

International Business Machines Corp. on Wednesday introduced new features to its cloud products, hoping to ease concerns among business customers about running and storing critical applications over the Internet.

The Armonk, N.Y., tech company said the updated cloud product offers more control and security to large businesses seeking to move applications online; allows enterprises to set up private clouds; and introduces new services for IBM partners and resellers to help small and medium businesses adopt cloud models and manage their cloud-based transactions.

"We're very focused on what enterprises need to protect their reputations, revenue and supply chains and bring real mission critical applications to the cloud," Lauren States, IBM chief technology officer of cloud computing, said.

Cloud computing, which allows users to lower infrastructure costs by accessing their applications through the Internet and internal networks, is quickly becoming popular among users and tech providers such as Amazon.com Inc.

But many enterprises, afraid of security risks and technical hiccups, are still hesitant to use public clouds shared by many organizations, preferring instead to set up private clouds within their own networks.

IBM is hoping to address those concerns and increase businesses' adoption of public clouds by ramping up security and other features that appeal to large businesses. It projects $7 billion in revenue from cloud computing hardware, software and services by 2015.

The company expects to support about 200 million users by the end of 2012, as clients shift their core applications and processes to IBM's SmartCloud.

IBM on Tuesday said it would purchase Platform Computing, a privately-held Toronto company it says will help advance its cloud strategy particularly around large, high performance and research-oriented applications. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

IBM's updated public cloud, dubbed SmartCloud Enterprise 2.0, includes features such as a platform-as-a-service, which facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of managing the infrastructure.

The company is introducing new software, called IBM SmartCloud Foundation, that will allow enterprises to quickly deploy and control clouds within their own network firewalls. It is setting up new services to help its business partners quickly participate in cloud computing by making it easier for them