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IBM fires WebSphere CloudBurst at McKinsey heretics

Iron rainmaker machine

When consultant McKinsey & Co recently warned that cloud computing would cost you money rather help you than save it, IBM took the unusual step of responding.

IBM wasn't the company singled out in the report - it was Amazon's fluffy Web Services. But IBM is working with Amazon to make its software available through the Elastic Compute Cloud

IBM was clearly rattled. McKinsey is influential among the kinds of thinkers IBM likes to impress, and cloud is the latest take on what IBM does best - data center systems and big, complicated software. IBM responded to McKinsey by producing its own numbers to claim companies can save on floor space, power, and cooling and deliver "triple asset utilization".

In a show of how much IBM has bought into the cloud, the company has announced something that it calls the culmination of more than 10 years of software management best practices.

IBM has announced a hardware appliance featuring a version of its battle-ship class WebSphere Java application server tuned virtualized data center environment, which features a new version of the Rational Framework and - yes - plugs into IBM's Tivoli systems management framework.

It's the WebSphere CloudBust that stores and secures images and patterns from WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition, IBM said. This edition of IBM's Java application server has been tuned for VMware's ESX and supports the Open Virtualization Format.

CloudBust features the Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere to configure and tune application using 400 automated tasks in WebSphere Application Server environments. Integration with the Tivoli Service Automation Manager provides the ability to request and manage tasks using pattern-based deployment.

CoudBurst is promised for the second-quarter of 2009.

IBM, meanwhile, has announced the availability of IBM Mashup Center and Lotus Forms Turbo to develop and test applications for Amazon EC2. IBM said it would add WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere eXtreme Scale to Mashup Center and Forms Turbo. ®

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