IBM completed acquisition of Cast Iron Systems, a “cloud computing specialists” with 75 employees and a customer list that includes “Allianz, NEC, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Dow Jones, Schumacher Group, ShoreTel, Sports Authority, Time Warner, Westmont University and many others.” The move signals more steps by IBM to benefit from cloud-based development efforts by the likes of Amazon.com, Salesforce.com and NetSuite, as well as the “hybrid” (premises-based + remote) development by its traditional software partners like J.D. Edwards and SAP.
According to its press release, IBM believes that businesses are already spending $46 billion on cloud-based solutions. Without citing specific sources, it sees a 28% annual growth rate to $126 billion in 2012. Cast Iron has built its business, to a certain degree on vendor neutrality. Its Web site is emblazoned with links that promote interconnection between and among Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Apps.
Given that some assembly is always required, the acquisition should provide plenty of revenue opportunities for the integration specialists at IBM Global Services, but the focus appears to be on IBM giving its customers the ability to do their own integration. As explained by Craig Hayman, the General Manager of IBM’s Websphere Group, IBM’s customers can “integrate business applications, no matter where those applications reside. This will give clients greater agility and as a result, better business outcomes.”
This sort of agile assembly of solutions that combine widgets and other re-usable sets of code wherever they may be found is at the heart of Recombinant Communications. It recognizes that employees at many business enterprises have become impatient with the pace at which new features and functions can be introduced that extend Web services to their desktops, laptops, smartphones or other mobile devices. In the age of “I’d rather do it myself”, they will find companies like IBM and its technology partners giving them the green light and companies like Cast Iron Systems giving them confidence that resources in the cloud can operate at the levels of efficiency and reliability required for enterprise-grade computing and communications.
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