IBM to fold SmartCloud Enterprise

IBM has confirmed it will shutter its public cloud platform SmartCloud Enterprise and migrate customers to SoftLayer, a web hosting company IBM acquired in July this year.

The move from SmartCloud Enterprise would provide “clients with a higher performing public cloud solution with advanced functionality”, an IBM spokesperson told iTnews.

IBM will keep operating its onshore managed private cloud platform SmartCloud Enterprise+ out of its Sydney data centre. SCE+ was launched in Australia in October last year.

IBM launched SmartCloud Enterprise in 2011 across six global IBM data centres.

The infrastructure as a service platform sat within the company’s greater SmartCloud framework, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Rackspace.

It allowed customers to immediately access virtual servers and storage resources in development and test environments.

“Particularly in Australia and New Zealand, there is both a readiness and need to move away from components and infrastructure and towards shared platforms and software – which are really where the tangible benefits of a cloud solution come into play,” Dean Evans, IBM A/NZ cloud computing executive, said at the time of the SCE+ launch.

IBM paid $US2 billion for SoftLayer earlier this year. IBM said in July it would reorganise its cloud offerings around the new acquisition, which would form its own business unit combined with SmartCloud.

Update 11:40am: IBM has confirmed its SmartCloud Enterprise data centre is located in Singapore, as is its SoftLayer data centre.The company is yet to provide details on how many Australian customers will be affected.