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IBM has bookended its cloud offerings and joined some of the dots in between with a mission critical platform as a service offering and a starter kit for rapid on-boarding.

The 'strata'of the world-wide announcement include IBM SmartCloud Application Services, which comprise platform-as-a-service 'enterprise applications with  a high level of control and security over deployment and access.'

At the other lower end it announced IBM SmartCloud Foundation – a private cloud starter kit with software and hardware for establishing clouds within enterprise firewalls.
 
Laura Colvine, Cloud Strategy Leader for UK &Ireland at IBM, said: "This expansion of the IBM cloud portfolio includes extensions of private cloud solutions around infrastructure as a platform. In the mission critical space we will deliver solutions with the existing and recognised IBM security and open standards capability. In mission critical application terms we are extending our capability in areas such as SAP workloads in a secure cloud. We are also differentiating our smart cloud solutions for vertical markets in areas such as smarter commerce and social meda and marketing and customer insight."
 
Among the services announced SmartCloud includes automating the most common labor intensive tasks associated with managing SAP environments in the cloud. The SmartCloud for SAP applications taps IBM’s experience in managing over 1.5 million users of SAP to significantly reduce the cost and labor associated with SAP cloning, refreshes and patching, the company said.
 
The was also a partner roll-out branded as IBM SmartCloud Ecosystem.

 Erich Clementi, senior vice president, IBM, said: "Our focus with SmartCloud will bring the benefits of this model in a way that supports enterprise level service, leverages existing investments and opens new doors to productivity and innovation."
 
The specifics of the announcement include: 

Available in beta in the fourth quarter, IBM SmartCloud Application Services will offer enterprise–grade security, open Java and cross-platform support with no vendor lock-in, and a comprehensive set of application infrastructure and managed services to enable development and deployment of applications to the cloud.

The Application Services will run on IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+  - the industry’s first enterprise class infrastructure-as-a-platform - specifically designed to run enterprise workloads, at committed business centric service level agreements
 
Key capabilities will cover five categories:
 
   • Application Lifecycle – Provide development organizations with
     access to rapidly activated and team-based development
     environments and capabilities
   • Application Resources – Leverage shared services to reduce the
     cost and simplify the development, delivery and ongoing
     administration of cloud applications
   • Application Environments – Accelerate and optimize the deployment
     and management of your applications with pre-defined environments
     based on common application patterns
   • Application Management – Support effective deployment and
     management of third party applications with optimized deployment
     and management capabilities tuned to the specific application
   • Integration – Integrate your cloud-delivered applications with
     other applications or resources on-premises or in the cloud

Separately IBM announced the acquisition of Platform Computing, a Toronto based High Performance Computing company. Financial details were not disclosed.