IBM, Oracle Unveil Multi-Cloud Deployment Options

Public cloud contenders hustling to keep pace with market leaders continue to differentiate their offerings with the rollout of new services spanning hybrid cloud deployments to network orchestration schemes.

For example, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and its Red Hat unit announced a partnership this week with Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) covering hybrid cloud deployments along with new cloud-based financial and document services. Separately this week, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) unveiled its software-defined orchestration cloud for managing network traffic across multiple platforms.

Adobe, IBM and Red Hat said Tuesday (July 21) their package of cloud services target regulated industries where requirements for capabilities like real-time data security are growing. A hybrid cloud deployment service would run on Red Hat OpenShift, transferring data and other assets among multiple public clouds and on-premise datacenters.

The partners also said they would offer new cloud-based financial services, with IBM extending Adobe’s Experience Manager platform to help enterprises comply with security and regulatory requirements.

IBM also said it would extend its business design services across Adobe’s enterprise applications, including its Creative and Document clouds.

“Businesses across industries are operating in an experience-first world where it is possible to gain immense value from data if trust and technology flexibility are central to the equation,” said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM Global Markets.

Another example of cloud differentiation is Oracle’s SD-WAN orchestration platform designed to help enterprise customers quickly deploy networks to connect services ranging from the Internet of Things to remote offices.

Software services are making it easier to scale SD-WAN services that allow businesses to link workloads across multiple clouds, observers note.

“The recent increase in remote work has accelerated the shift to a cloud-first model for enterprises, putting pressure on IT professionals to ensure application availability, performance and security in any public cloud,” said Andrew Morawski, general manager of Oracle Communications’ network unit.

The orchestration cloud is designed to design and deploy SD-WAN technology across IP networks and public clouds. Oracle asserts its network management tool would allow operators to instead focus on other IT priorities.

The orchestration cloud runs with Oracle’s SD-WAN edge and other networking platforms, and can be deployed on its cloud infrastructure as well as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

Those deployment options illustrate how cloud contenders like Oracle and IBM are promoting multi-cloud deployments as a way of gaining a larger slice of the booming public cloud market currently dominated by AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud and China’s Alibaba (NYSE: BABA).