Using the Power of PureApplication: without the box

When PureApplication System was first announced it was in one form factor “The big box”. The “big deal” wasn’t just that it’s a nice big shiny box but that it included a topology modelling and deployment tool – known as a pattern engine. Nowadays there’s even more ways you can leverage the power of this engine, you’re not just restricted to the PureApplication System ‘big box’.

More Choice, More Flexibility

The PureApplication pattern engine enables you to create PureApplication patterns – which revolutionise the way that you model, deploy and manage complete solution topologies. I’ve written much on patterns themselves so I won’t go over them more here.

The great news is that you can now also create patterns and deploy them across an array of hardware and cloud options:

 1. You Can Leverage Patterns On Any Hardware, Not Just IBM’s

This is an attractive option for customers who love the concept of patterns but have already invested heavily in a particular infrastructure – whether that be x86 commoditised hardware, RISC systems etc. or perhaps some other converged system.

In these cases IBM has the ICO offering – IBM Cloud Orchestrator. (Be aware – this has gone through several name changes most recently from SmartCloud Orchestrator (SCO), prior to that it has also been called Cloudburst and IBM Workload Deployer (IWD).)

ICO uses that same pattern engine as the PureApplication System (“The big box”). But it differs in that it is not in the same form factor – you need to Bring Your Own (BYO) hardware. Using this ICO with your hardware means that you can still leverage the PureApplication pattern engine to deploy, manage and maintain applications on-premise.

It’s important to note that with the ICO option, you will also need to manage the virtualisation system that runs on that infrastructure. Running the virtualisation layer might sound easy but actually it can add a lot of operational Expenditure (opex) to the problem (which is precisely why PureApplication System handles that virtualisation management seamlessly for you).

2. You Can Leverage Patterns On Cloud

PureApplication Service On SoftLayer

In mid 2013 IBM acquired a very large Data Center provider –SoftLayer. This was already a well respected Data Center provider and IBM has added to that by ploughing in 1.2 billion USD. This has allowed them more global reach and increased their size generally.

IBM has made exactly the same pattern engine that runs in PureApplication System and ICO available to you off-premise in the cloud running on SoftLayer. The offering is calledPureApplication *Service*. (NOTE: Service in the cloud because it’s effectively giving you PureApplication As A Service; as against System in the converged infrastructure form factor ).

This is an option for customers who want more flexibility in their infrastructure models.  It’s an easy way for you to extend your applications to a secure cloud without the necessary upfront investments to built out on-premise in infrastructure – you can use IBM’s cloud datacentre instead. This allows you to remove your capital expenditure (capex) entirely and reduce your operational expenditure (opex) to a minimum as well.

Your Pattern Deployment Options

With More To Come

What you will see is IBM enabling the PureApplication pattern engine on different cloud providers  – in fact IBM has just announced PureApplication patterns being supported on Azure. This will allow you to pick and choose the right cloud provider for you but use the identical topology patterns regardless of which provider you choose, either now or in the future. What this means to you is that if you want to change cloud provider or perhaps bring the pattern to run in-house you can do so and the pattern remains the same.

It’s clear that the story has evolved dramatically since PureApplication System was first announced only two years ago. It’s moved from enabling patterns in one offering to being omni-present. This was a very clear and deliberate strategy by IBM who, as always, have their eye on the long-game. If I were to hedge my bets I would suggest that you may see PureApplication patterns and BlueMix converging at some time – but it won’t be soon. More on BlueMix in another blog!