IBM Extends Development and Test to Their Cloud

In a move designed to cultivate their partner ecosystem, IBM is extending development and test services to their enterprise cloud platform, allowing software vendors and cloud service providers to build, debug, and finally deliver applications all through Big Blue. Here’s the scoop.

Rather than deploy costly infrastructure, IBM’s new cloud service lets partners call up the resources they need to test an application on demand. It cuts down on provisioning time, which in turns cuts down on the time required for testing and QA, which IBM claims can cut down on software defects by up to 30 percent.

Big Blue will let you leverage this new service either in your own private cloud or hosted out of their own data centers. If that doesn’t suit, they also offer it in the form of a preconfigured IBM CloudBurst hardware appliance. No matter what you choose, IBM’s environment supports the Red Hat and SUSE “flavors” of Enterprise Linux as well as Java.

Also announced was a new cloud computing resource center for developers on IBM’s developerWorks resource and the availability on IBM Cloud of Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing v1.0, a bundle of the IBM-owned Rational products and solutions.

It looks like IBM’s trying to eat Amazon Web Services’ lunch. By turning the IBM Cloud into a one-stop shop for software developers, they’re hoping to cash in on their name recognition and attract as many partners as they can.

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