IBM announced today a new hybrid cloud solution that can help clients significantly reduce the time it takes them to connect manage and secure public and private clouds. Building on its acquisition of Cast Iron, IBM’s new solution helps organizations of all sizes gain greater visibility, control and automation into their assets and computing environments, regardless of their location. As a result, organizations will find it significantly easier to integrate and manage their entire on and-off premise resources and complete tasks that once took several months in a few days.

Organizations are increasingly choosing the hybrid cloud model over the public cloud because they can easily control and mange resources in-house and use applications externally as a service. Analysts found that 39% of both private and public cloud users say that the hybrid cloud is currently part of their strategy; that number is expected to grow to 61% in the near future.

However, organizations face difficulties when trying to integrate existing on premise software, and homegrown applications, while managing their usage and security. These challenges are the top concerns when it comes to adopting software-as a-service applications.

According to IBM, the new hybrid cloud technology overcomes these challenges by providing the following:

• Control and Management Resources: The new software defines policies, quotas, limits, monitoring and performance rules for the public Cloud in the same way as on premise resources. This allows users to access public cloud resources through a single-service catalog – enabling IT staff to govern the access and the usage of this information. As a result, organizations can more easily control costs, IT capacity and regulatory concerns.
• Security: IBM enables better control of users’ access by synching the user directories of on premise and cloud applications. The automated synchronization means users can only gain entry to the information they are authorized to access.
• Application Integration: Using a simplified “configuration, not coding” approach to application integration, the software combines the power of native connectivity with industry leading applications to provide best-practices for rapid and repeatable project success.
• Dynamic Provisioning: IBM’s monitoring, provisioning and integration capabilities allow its hybrid cloud to support “cloud bursting,” which is the dynamic relocation of workloads from private environments to public clouds during peak times. IBM’s technical and business policies control this sophisticated data integration.

For more information about the IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud Integration, visit: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/cast-iron-cloud-integration/.