IBM enters cloud computing

Color me shocked, but IBM has just rolled out a cloud computing offering. For the short year that I worked at IBM I argued many times for IBM to enter SaaS, but to no avail, so it's great to see them finally entering the field. Now this is IBM and those bureaucratic genes run deep, so don't expect to just whip out a credit card and start playing:

Fill out a test drive enrollment form
You will be contacted by an IBM CoD specialist to discuss the offer and agree to terms including a small activation fee of $99 and desired start date
You will be issued instructions, a VPN ID and password to access an isolated cluster in the IBM CoD center for the agreed upon timeframe
You can try the service up to 3 days

I can only imagine the process if you want to actually sign up and do something. Regardless, I take it as a positive sign that IBM has finally arrived.

I'm pretty ignorant of the inner workings of IBM, but I can only imagine that the reason for this might be the sales / consulting arm flexing their collective muscle... after all, from their perspective, completely automated relationships must be very scary. Of course, that's a huge liability, and one of the reasons that many consider them a dinosaur.

Posted by Mark Nottingham on 2009-06-17