IBM Multicloud Manager Enhances Big Blue's Hybrid Posture

IBM unveiled a management solution Monday that gives its private cloud customers running containerized workloads greater control over apps extending into public cloud environments.

IBM Multicloud Manager enables hybrid and multi-cloud use cases for IBM Cloud Private, a containerization platform used to build cloud-native applications and modernize legacy workloads, said Robin Hernandez, director for IBM Private Cloud Offering Management.

The service was motivated by conversations with IBM Cloud Private customers looking to manage container clusters and integrate sets of application components deployed beyond their firewalls, Hernandez told CRN.

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IBM Cloud Private, launched last year as an entry point into private cloud, enables app development with Kubernetes container orchestration technology or Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service.

Many of those customers have been extending applications built on that platform into IBM's public cloud as well as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and other third-party environments, Hernandez said.

They "have expanded the definition of private cloud into this hybrid, multi-cloud definition," she said.

"This helps businesses define what's in an application, what pieces of code are being used and being reused in other applications, where they're running, how they're moving and how they're being scaled out."

The solution is meant to be agnostic to all cloud providers and technologies, Hernandez said. But IBM has teamed with three crucial partners—AWS, Microsoft and Red Hat—to extensively validate specific infrastructure and hardware configurations.

The Red Hat partnership forged in May facilitates integrations between IBM's Kubernetes technology and Red Hat's OpenShift Kubernetes platform.

Multicloud Manager also delivers new ways to enforce compliance and governance policies for IBM Cloud Private customers expanding their footprints into the public cloud.

The product was quietly released a couple weeks ago in advance of a public announcement.

IBM's services team, as well as IBM aligned global systems integrators and resellers, will offer managed services around Multicloud manager, she said.