Social and mobile transaction data growth requires analytics to harvest value with cloud computing as the underlying infrastructure. This has been an IBM focal point for many months now, and the company has been introducing associated social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) solutions and services at its annual customer and partner conferences (i.e. Connect, Pulse, Impact, Innovate, Edge and Information On Demand [IOD]).

At the recent Impact 2013 conference, IBM categorized a new class of systems of interaction bringing together systems of record (transactional, service-oriented), systems of engagement (interaction-oriented, context-aware) and the Internet of Things (embedded devices, sensor-driven).

Cloud solutions require a strong integration infrastructure to combine on- and off-premises Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. Recognizing the critical importance of this point, IBM acquired Cast Iron in 2010 to complement the acquisition of DataPower in 2005, a combination which has aided the delivery of integration capabilities in high demand by customers. With the continuing growth of mobile devices such as smart phones and an expanding multitude of smart sensors (like RFID tags), security and scalability are crucial to a reliable solution. Accordingly, IBM announced:

IBM API Management:
The API (application programming interface) economy is too important for any vendor to ignore. Multiple born-on-the-web companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Twitter and eBay are setting the trend of building ecosystems by providing API access. Managing interactions with customers, vendors and channel partners opens opportunities for new sources of revenue and is rapidly becoming a required capability for enterprises to offer. According to IBM, this new solution will help organizations securely create, manage and socialize APIs, helping extend their products and services to various mobile channels. Interestingly, IBM is not the only vendor jumping into this market or expanding their API Management capabilities. Recently, Intel purchased Mashery, CA Technologies acquired Layer 7 and Mulesoft bought Programmable Web from Alcatel-Lucent. The good news for customers is that there will be competition and multiple options for supporting their API Management efforts.

IBM MessageSight:
According to a study by IDC, smart phone sales topped other mobile phones in the first quarter of this year. At the same time, AT&T began offering customers home security and automation services. These developments and similar trends contribute to the phenomenal growth of data from mobile devices and sensors. At the same time, the events generated from these sources need to be processed in real time to deliver actionable results. To handle the need to process millions of transactions per second, IBM’s answer is to package the solution in an appliance called MessageSight, giving the capability to deliver a product using low power consumption. Special purpose appliances give customers a more simple way to handle transaction growth.

Better Automation:
While the needs of business to manage transaction and data growth are rapidly growing, there is a crucial need for programmable infrastructure to handle the deluge of services made available and the foundation of compute, storage & network resources. Beyond core infrastructure components, the IBM PureApplication System was enhanced to better handle disaster recovery, security and scalability while simplifying cloud deployments.

With many enterprise customers using Windows-based applications, it was not surprising that the IBM PureApplication System now supports Microsoft Sharepoint and SQL Server. Through automation, these systems could significantly reduce the need for services in outsourced contracts or effort needed by an in-house IT staff. When long term outsourced contracts come up for renewal, customers can benefit by looking at the underlying technology used by their vendors to automate regular tasks and reduce labor. At the same time, customers should continuously monitor new capabilities available from IT product vendors.

IBM’s focus on better integration reflects changing customer requirements that also complement the additional demands placed on enterprise IT infrastructure by new workloads. Delivering a higher order of services in a programmatic way through automation is the only way to address the geometric growth of IT resources.

Large enterprises will choose vendors who help simplify the transition to and management of the new landscape. Business partners will evaluate technology from vendors to build managed services to meet expectations of their customers. After reviewing the Impact 2013 announcements, IBM seems to be recognizing the significant change in customer needs and responding with solutions designed to address them.