Move To The Cloud Easily With Ibm Smartcloud Entry V31 And Ibm Common Cloud Stack

This IBM® RedpaperTM publication describes our newest product for helping businesses enter the world of cloud technology: IBM SmartCloud® Entry, Version 3.1. This software includes the IBM Common Cloud Stack, which is powered by open source OpenStack from the OpenStack Foundation. These products work together to help you move your business to the cloud. This paper explains the ways that you can take advantage of this extensive and powerful technology. With the power of cloud computing, you can enhance your existing services, extend your market reach, and create new markets for your services. IBM SmartCloud Entry V3.1 is easy to use, even for first-time cloud service users. It can enable you to benefit from cloud technology in less time and with less effort than you might think. This Redpaper features two scenarios that demonstrate the ease of carrying out processes with IBM SmartCloud Entry software. The information is directed to two primary audiences. Chapter 1 is directed mainly to decision-makers, such as CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs, who need to know about cloud technology and the power that it offers. The remainder of the paper is directed to IT professionals, such as information architects, business intelligence administrators, and database administrators, who need to know about the functions and capabilities of SmartCloud Entry and Common Cloud Stack.

Gamification is defined as the application of game-design elements (game mechanics) such as points, badges, ranking, and leader boards in non-game contexts. With gamification, design elements known from games can be used in several ways; Businesses have begun to use gamification to enhance profitability, staff have turned work into a game in order to reduce the monotony, serious applications like work and education are being started using mechanisms borrowed from game design, by adding elements from games into non-game e-learning applications. With the intention of modifying behaviors, increasing fidelity or engaging people, by leveraging human motivations present in games.

This IBM® RedpaperTM publication provides a brief overview of cloud technology, and describes how, from a user perspective, IBM SmartCloudTM Entry can help you access the benefits of the cloud. In particular, the product provides a comprehensive cloud software stack with capabilities that you otherwise might need to purchase separately as multiple products from multiple vendors. Businesses with an existing virtualized platform (IBM Power SystemsTM with PowerVM® or IBM System x with VMware vSphere) can be transformed to a private cloud. IBM SmartCloud Entry makes this transformation possible. IBM SmartCloud Entry integrates with the IBM PureFlexTM System, so that clients with PureFlex System can also experience easier cloud-ready deployments. IBM SmartCloud Entry adds a self-service, user portal, and basic metering to your existing virtualized platform. Overall, IBM SmartCloud Entry delivers improved service levels and fast time-to-value results for receiving the benefits of a private cloud infrastructure. The four use cases demonstrate how easily IBM SmartCloud Entry can be deployed and the possibilities for improved efficiencies in your organization. The cases demonstrate cloud deployment in PureFlex, VMware, Power Systems and x86 environments, and a telecom company. Also described are two IBM SmartCloud Entry processes, showing the ease of provisioning and installing with this product. This paper is directed at decision-makers, such as CFOs, CIOs, CEOs, IT managers, systems administrators, enterprise architects, systems architects, and IBM Business Partners. Presales and post-sales technical staff can benefit from discussing this paper with clients and potential clients.

Distributed computing has been transformed with the introduction of virtualization technology. This has driven a re-architecture of traditional data center workload placement. In 2012, IBM® announced IBM PureSystemsTM, a new offering based on preconfigured software, servers, and storage that form an expert integrated system. Expert integrated systems now combine traditional IT resources into a single optimized solution, with prepackaged components including servers, storage devices, networking equipment, and software. With this evolution of technology, we move from discrete, siloed, and underutilized IT resources to shared resource pools. This IBM Redbooks® publication can help you install, tailor, and configure IBM SmartCloud® Entry on the IBM PureFlexTM System offering. This book is intended for anyone who wants to learn more about cloud computing with IBM SmartCloud Entry and offerings based on IBM Flex SystemTM elements.

Cloud computing opens a broad range of business opportunities across the computing industry and enables companies in other industries to provide services to their employees, customers, and partners. Cloud computing provides a compelling approach to addressing this opportunity. The IBM® SmartCloudTM for Service Providers portfolio can dramatically lower the business and technical barriers of entry to cloud computing. Companies rely on their business applications and systems as an integral part of their business. They can expand the business value of their applications and systems by using cloud computing to enable delivery of these functions as services. Companies have various options when adopting cloud computing. They can: Use existing service providers to operate services on their behalf. Implement hybrid solutions that extend existing applications through integration with cloud services. Add cloud service hosting capability to their existing facilities. For ecosystem partners, cloud computing provides compelling capabilities that ease deployment and long term management and maintenance. Equally important, cloud computing facilitates a more flexible business and technical environment. This environment can expand, contract, and adapt as services are added, removed, and evolve. The cloud replaces physical activity associated with change and change management by creating a fluid environment that adapts through automation. This IBM RedguideTM publication describes the business and technology choices companies make when entering the cloud service provider space. It introduces various cloud service provider business models and shows how to apply them to your business. This guide introduces the IBM CCRA cloud service provider adoption pattern, providing guidance about the definition, architecture, and deployment of cloud computing environments. Two cloud service provider deployment scenarios are highlighted throughout the guide, and they reflect the two most common starting points for service providers entering the cloud computing marketplace. The guide culminates with details about these deployment scenarios, and showing how they can be deployed today.

Distributed computing has been transformed with the introduction of virtualization technology. This has driven a re-architecture of traditional data center workload placement. In 2012, IBM® announced IBM PureSystems, a new offering based on preconfigured software, servers, and storage that form an expert integrated system. Expert integrated systems now combine traditional IT resources into a single optimized solution, with prepackaged components including servers, storage devices, networking equipment, and software. With this evolution of technology, we move from discrete, siloed, and underutilized IT resources to shared resource pools. This IBM Redbooks® publication can help you install, tailor, and configure IBM SmartCloud® Entry on the IBM PureFlex System offering. This book is intended for anyone who wants to learn more about cloud computing with IBM SmartCloud Entry and offerings based on IBM Flex System elements.

Organizations are looking for ways to get more out of their already strained IT infrastructure as they face new technological and economic pressures. They are also trying to satisfy a broad set of users (internal and external to the enterprise) who demand improvements in their quality of service (QoS), regardless of increases in the number of users and applications. Cloud computing offers attractive opportunities to reduce costs, accelerate development, and increase the flexibility of the IT infrastructure, applications, and services. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the typical starting point for most organizations when moving to a cloud computing environment. IaaS can be used for the delivery of resources such as compute, storage, and network services through a self-service portal. With IaaS, IT services are delivered as a subscription service, eliminating up-front costs and driving down ongoing support costs. IBM® has defined the Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CCRA) based on years of experience of working with customers who have implemented cloud-computing solutions. The IBM CCRA is a blueprint or guide for architecting cloud-computing implementations. This IBM RedguideTM publication highlights the Cloud Enabled Data Center adoption pattern and describes how you can use it to define an IaaS solution. This guide is intended for chief technology officers, data center architects, IT architects, and application architects who want to understand the cloud-computing infrastructure necessary to support their applications and services by using an IaaS solution. It explains the technical and business benefits of a Cloud Enabled Data Center solution. It introduces a Cloud Enabled Data Center maturity model where each maturity level corresponds to an increase in the degree of automation and the cloud-computing capabilities that are available. In addition, this guide describes the architectural framework provided by the IBM CCRA and explains details about the Cloud Enabled Data Center adoption pattern.

A practical, user-friendly guide that provides an introduction to cloud computing using IBM SmartCloud, along with a thorough understanding of resource management in a cloud environment.This book is great for anyone who wants to get a grasp of what cloud computing is and what IBM SmartCloud has to offer. If you are an IT specialist, IT architect, system administrator, or a developer who wants to thoroughly understand the cloud computing resource model, this book is ideal for you. No prior knowledge of cloud computing is expected.

In a traditional deployment model, software is installed on a physical server, and it is configured for the particular data center environment. The cloud deployment model requires that the dependency on a specific hardware configuration is severed. This IBM® Redbooks® publication guides you through the transition from the traditional application deployment model to the cloud-friendly deployment model. It explains how to achieve these goals by packaging the software stacks into industry standard virtual appliances. A key part of this transition involves using the IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool. This tool is the IBM tool for creating virtualized workloads that target several private cloud deployment platforms, including platforms from IBM and not from IBM. In fact, this tool is unique in its ability to support such a wide range of cloud offerings. It is also the only tool in the marketplace that can create virtual appliances for both x86 and IBM Power hardware architectures. This book provides an in-depth look at the capabilities and internal workings of Image Construction and Composition Tool. It focuses on the capabilities of this tool, which target the virtualization and cloud offerings of IBM Systems and Technology Group. These offerings include IBM Systems Director VMControlTM, IBM SmartCloud® Entry, and IBM PureFlexTM System with IBM Flex System ManagerTM appliance. The Image Construction and Composition Tool also has a much richer set of capabilities. Specifically, it supports IBM Workload Deployer, IBM PureApplicationTM Systems, and IBM SmartCloud Provisioning. This publication targets software architects, cloud solutions architects, and cloud administrators. Its goal is to provide you with the expert-level skills required to package the existing and newly created applications into self-configurable, smart virtual appliances. Related publication: Smart Virtual Appliances Made Easy with IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool, TIPS1037

IBM® SmartCloud® Virtual Storage Center provides efficient virtualization and management of heterogeneous storage systems. It facilitates migration to an agile cloud architecture that can optimize storage availability and performance, while helping to reduce costs. IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center (VSC) helps convert existing storage to IBM Smarter Storage, providing more room for data growth and simplified storage administration. This IBM Redbooks® publication gives an overview of the concepts of software-defined environment (SDE) and software-defined storage (SDS), and how they work together with VSC. It explores the architecture, components, and interfaces, providing details of VSC and how to use it. It also includes practical scenarios and use cases, helpful for client VSC business environments, with a focus on the following topics: Introductory concepts VSC components and available integrations Storage management component of VSC Storage virtualization component of VSC Application aware data protection component of VSC VSC storage provisioning VSC storage optimization This book is primarily for storage administrators, users who are responsible for maintaining IT and business infrastructures, and anyone who wants to learn more about IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center.