IBM bets on a multi-cloud future

As Amazon, Microsoft, and Google battle for cloud dominance, IBM is taking a different tack. Yes, it is building is own public cloud, and is on the homestretch of harmonizing its disparate Bluemix and SoftLayer cloud flavors. But it is also looking at the sweet spot of its customer base, and what it sees is organizations that tend to use many clouds. It recently commissioned a survey with BCG and McKinsey that quantified what's probably common knowledge: over 90% of enterprises are using multiple clouds, with two thirds of them using two (and usually more) public clouds.

IBM's cloud message is not that its public cloud is bigger and badder, but that it is targeting the management of multiple clouds. And those clouds are going to be running in a mix of environments: inside the firewall, outside in "bare metal" single tenanted private clouds, and public cloud. IBM terms it "hybrid cloud and multi-cloud."

The draw of public cloud is the opportunity to simplify and transform IT, but the risk is cloud vendor lock-in. If you use any PaaS (Platform as a Service) or SaaS (Software as a Service) offering, you are making a vendor platform decision all over again. Even if you simply go to using IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), you'll have to pay the ransom for extracting any data that you have stored in case you want to take your business (and data) elsewhere.

IBM faces several challenges here. First, the onus is on IBM for rolling out tooling that won't automatically lead to heavy services engagements. But secondly, it must ensure that the cure for complexity is not more complex than the disease. It must address questions as to what level of management and oversight solves rather than compounds the problem.

For instance, will it be necessary for IBM to duplicate the function of Amazon CloudWatch when the specific client's point of pain centers on controlling costs? And by the way, yes, IBM has a brokerage solution just for that. Then there are some functions, such as optimizing the choice of the right compute, storage, and network instances for the job that will be best left to the cloud provider, which will have the most current information on their portfolio.

Given that IBM was not first to building public cloud, going to its core DNA of managing complexity is the logical path. But IBM must make the case that stitching multiple clouds into a coherent management plane won't translate to introducing more complexity or writing blank checks to consultants. Maybe the tag line for IBM's multi-cloud strategy should be, clouds were supposed to simplify IT, but when you have a lot of them, nobody said it would be easy.