OREANDA-NEWS. IBM (NYSE: IBM) is introducing several new services on Bluemix, IBM’s cloud development platform, designed to help developers create analytics-driven cloud applications.
The services announced today, will make it easier for developers to create cloud applications for mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain analytics and intelligent infrastructure solutions. They will be added to over 100 services already available in the Bluemix catalog, which includes complementary analytics tools from IBM such as those found in the recently unveiled IoT Zone and Watson Zone.

Created on open technologies that allow developers to build, run and manage cloud applications and services with more flexibility, Bluemix enables developers to mix and match different services and tools that best fit their strategy. IBM launched Bluemix with a \$1 billion investment in 2014; since then, it has become the largest Cloud Foundry deployment in the world.

IBM is adding more of its own technology into Bluemix, including:

  • Bluemix API Management allows developers to rapidly create, deploy, and share large scale APIs and provides a simple and consumable way of controlling critical APIs not possible with simpler connector services.
  • New mobile capabilities available on Bluemix for the IBM MobileFirst Platform, which provide the ability to develop location-based mobile apps that connect insights from digital engagement and physical presence. 

Among the ecosystem and third-party services being announced today are:

  • Public availability of the .NET Runtime (preview) in IBM Bluemix and open sourcing of .NET Buildpack that grants developers in any Cloud Foundry based environment the ability to leverage Microsoft's development capabilities, making it easier to integrate multiple cloud workloads.
  • Namara.io platform by ThinkData Works aggregates and catalogues available open data into a single portal, providing businesses, developers, and citizens with API access to high value information.
  • Cupenya Insights provides an analytics foundation that allows developers to connect and monitor business activities across several Bluemix applications, define key performance indicators and receive performance overview of the entire business process or supply chain.
  • flowthings.io by Flow Corporation collects real-time data and provides complex event processing, and data delivery that makes it easier to integrate applications with almost any software or device in the Internet of Things space.
  • Reappt from Push Technology delivers data at unmatched scale and speed over the Internet to give your apps a performance edge.

Underscoring developer choice and skill development of open source technologies as key tenets of cloud innovation, IBM is supporting the expansion of independent Cloud Foundry Dojo's by establishing the first IBM Cloud Foundry Dojo, located in Raleigh, NC. The IBM Cloud Foundry Dojo will be a physical place open to all developers where IBM will help accelerate skills on the Cloud Foundry Code base and mentor developers to dramatically increase the number of code committers to Cloud Foundry.

IBM already has 12 Dojo graduates on its team, and a dedicated team of 9 full time developers to work solely on Cloud Foundry as official committers from IBM on a number of key projects including Elastic Runtime, Diego, Services, BOSH, CLI and Eclipse Tools for Cloud Foundry.

IBM has long supported open source organization in addition to Cloud Foundry, recently unveiling IBM Containers, a Docker-based container service delivered on Bluemix that includes open Docker-native features and interfaces, including the new Docker orchestration services. The IBM Containers service will enable enterprises to launch Docker containers directly onto the IBM Cloud on bare metal servers from SoftLayer. With this technology, developers have an environment that is simpler to manage and offers increased utilization and performance in a more flexible execution model, expanding the types of applications that can be supported on the IBM Cloud.

IBM total cloud revenue—covering public, private and hybrid engagements—was \$7.7 billion over the previous 12 months at the end of March 2015; it grew more than 60 percent in first quarter 2015. IBM’s cloud delivered as a service business, a subset of the total, includes PaaS.