Amazon and IBM Team Up In The Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM have announced a partnership that provides users with the ability to use Amazon EC2 to build and run a range of IBM platform technologies. The IBM environments that will be available initially includes IBM WebSphere Portal Server, IBM DB2, WebSphere sMash, IBM Lotus Web Content Management, and IBM WebSphere Portal Server.

IBM customers and partners have a number of options for utilizing Amazon EC2 including:

• Utilizing IBM’s “Development” AMI’s
• Use a “Production” Amazon EC2 running IBM service
• BYOL – Bring Your Own Licenses to Amazon EC2

IBM is providing the Development AMI’s at no additional charge and AWS will charge a pay as you go hourly pricing scheme for the Production Amazon EC2 running IBM service.

Although IBM was beat to the punch by Oracle, RedHat, and Sun in partnering with AWS;  its initial offerings are very impressive and show how quickly Cloud Services are becoming the de facto standard in the software industry.

1. Arthur Mueller , February 13, 2009:

   Whats going to make it or break it for the IBM deal will be the pricing for the Production EC2. Will be very interesting to see if the pricing is in line with Oracle’s pricing for example.

   IBM pricing has always been on the high side and I dont see how they can price the Amazon EC2 lower with their overhead.

2. Ameed Taylor , February 14, 2009:

   Product or solution success will always come back to pricing…especially in today’s economy