IBM Extends SmartCloud With New Enterprise Services

The new cloud service will be available in IBM's global network of cloud centers in Japan, Brazil, Canada, France, Australia, the U.S. and Germany, as well as one in Barcelona, which IBM said will open in mid-2013.

IBM also said SCE+ will support SAP applications, including SAP Business Suite software and the SAP BusinessObjects.

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The new cloud service is intended to go beyond public IaaS clouds by offering high service-level agreements, security and reliability along with elasticity and subscription-based pricing, IBM said. It will give enterprises access from the cloud to core applications such as ERP, CRM, analytics, social business and mobile computing.

IBM SCE+ will leverage IBM's enterprise architecture, as well as its software and hardware, to enable existing enterprise customers to more easily build a foundation to access the cloud.

In building IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+, IBM also drew on its expertise as a provider IT sourcing services with more than 1,000 clients, the company said.

"This is a logical evolution of IBM's sourcing business that gives us an advantage both in our services relationships and the cloud market as we define a new enterprise-grade cloud today," Jim Comfort, general manager of IBM SmartCloud Services, said in a statement. "Our clients want sophisticated, economical cloud-based services that provide the same quality and service level as a private, hosted IT environment."

IBM SmartCloud will automate and standardize provisioning for SAP applications and will be available as an enterprise-class, platform-as-a-service, IBM said.

PUBLISHED JAN. 30, 2013