OREANDA-NEWS. July 01, 2015. Startups and emerging businesses throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are increasingly turning to IBM (NYSE: IBM) to accelerate cloud-based business models and deliver innovative services. By adopting IBM Cloud’s Bluemix and SoftLayer platforms, companies in a number of industries, including healthcare, gaming and public safety, are growing their businesses in CEE and beyond.

According to International Monetary Fund, across much of the CEE region, the economy has begun to recover at a relatively solid pace „Regional Economic Issues - Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe“ by International Monetary Fund, May 2015: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/reo/2015/eur/eng/pdf/REI0515.pdf . With a strengthening business climate, organizations are committed to investing in technologies like cloud, mobile and analytics, which can speed growth and transformation.

"In Central and Eastern Europe, spending on cloud services, which includes public, private and hybrid cloud, is on the rise and is far exceeding the growth rates of traditional technology delivery models. Cloud delivery—along with other modern technologies and delivery models such as mobility, big data/analytics and social media—is becoming a de-facto business model and requires a new sourcing approach and a transformation of services management", said Vladimir Kroa, Associate Vice President, IT Services, IDC CEMA.

"Consequently, the integration of internal and external resources is becoming more frequent as end users are opting for a hybrid cloud model that, on one hand, solves some of the legislative concerns about data privacy, and, at the same time, enables more flexibility, price transparency and acceleration of go-to-market strategies", he added.

A number of organizations across CEE have recently adopted IBM Cloud, which provides them with the tools and experience necessary to extend their businesses to the cloud and reach new markets through a variety of deployment models, including hybrid cloud. Clients also benefit from access to Bluemix, IBM Cloud’s development platform, which enables developers to create interactive mobile and analytics-based applications that can be hosted on SoftLayer infrastructure. These businesses include:  

  • In Poland, CI Games, a computer-gaming developer, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment products with sales in more than 40 countries worldwide. To improve the quality of its multiplayer online gaming service, CI Games migrated its multiplayer game services to SoftLayer. With IBM Cloud, CI Games has improved service quality for its customers, reduced IT costs, increased service availability and increased agility to deliver new multiplayer games.
  • In Poland, fast growing startup Telemedi.co used IBM Cloud to deploy a secure platform to store data and enable consultations with doctors via web or mobile device. With Bluemix and SoftLayer, Telemedi.co gained greater scalability and reliability for its platform, enabling it to grow traction by 10x in just one year, and increase customer satisfaction and trust by 20 percent.
  • In Czech Republic, Kodarna relied on IBM Cloud to develop and host a mobile video app called "Silent Line" that enables deaf people to communicate with a call center using sign language or plain text to request emergency services from any mobile device. Based in part on its adoption of Bluemix and SoftLayer, Kodarna’s business grew 30 percent over the past year.
  • In Russia, Navigine relied on IBM Cloud to roll out its advanced indoor navigation platform for a fire department customer in less than two days. For fire fighters, the platform collects and analyzes data from multiple sources within buildings where GPS navigation isn’t reliable in order to improve public safety. With SoftLayer, Navigine can rapidly scale server capacity, improve confidence about uptime, and easily integrate their services with Bluemix.
  • In Slovenia, Acceleration Business City (ABC), the country’s first private business accelerator, selected IBM Cloud as its main platform to provide students, researchers and entrepreneurs with a place for networking, gaining business expertise and developing go-to-market strategies. ABC transitioned to the IBM Cloud to build a platform to provide small businesses and start-ups with access to mobile, big data and Watson services that accelerate the creation of new solutions.

“We are now expanding our operations to other European markets. By using IBM Cloud we can do it seamlessly and make sure our customers get the best service no matter in which country they operate“ – said Pawel Sieczkiewicz, CTO Telemedi.co. – “We probably would not have attempted such a large move without relying on IBM Cloud.”

IBM launched Bluemix with a \\$1 billion investment in 2014, maturing quickly to become the largest Cloud Foundry deployment in the world. Its developer-friendly catalog provides access to over 100 tools and services of the most prominent open-source technologies combined with IBM and third-party services that let developers focus all of their energy on the creation of enterprise class cloud applications at consumer scale.

SoftLayer became part of the IBM Cloud in July 2013. The SoftLayer infrastructure is now the foundation of IBM’s cloud portfolio—including extensive middleware software and solutions—ensuring businesses have the scalability, transparency, and control they need to deploy IT operations in the cloud. In January, IBM committed to investing \\$1.2 billion to expand its global cloud operations in all major geographies and financial centers, increasing the reach and capability of a business’ IT operations.  IBM Cloud operates SoftLayer facilities in North and South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe, including data centers in the greater London area, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Almere in Netherlands.

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 both platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings.

For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.