IBM: Welcome to the Multi-Cloud World

Last week IBM announced it was acquiring Red Hat for $34 billion in an attempt to revitalize its faltering cloud business.  IBM really missed the boat on becoming a fully integrated cloud provider like Amazon (which offers 100+ different cloud services today).  I think their strategy to embrace an open, multi-cloud world makes a lot of sense.

Ironically, Amazon’s approach to cloud computing is similar to IBM’s original approach to mainframe computing: build a closed system and lock-in your customers.  Just like with an old IBM mainframe environment where you often had little choice but to use IBM infrastructure and services, Amazon wants you to run all parts of your application in AWS.  They lock you in by charging egress fees for any data leaving Amazon via the internet.

Many early adopters who migrated to the cloud to escape proprietary vendors like Oracle, Microsoft and SAP, now find themselves held hostage to Amazon.  Many are looking for greater choice and are pursuing multi-cloud options.

Since IBM probably can't catch up with the breadth of cloud services Amazon offers, I think it is logical for them to embrace the open, multi-cloud approach and focus on providing solid infrastructure and open development tools and services.  And Red Hat has the open-source experience and multi-cloud technologies like OpenShift to help IBM succeed.

IBM may have missed the public-cloud boat, but the cloud market in general is still in its infancy.  Most businesses are really just starting their cloud journey.  And most are pursuing hybrid/multi-cloud approaches. In fact, a 2018 survey revealed 81% of enterprises plan to use multiple clouds. 

Wasabi was Built for the Multi-Cloud World

Wasabi shares IBM’s view of an open cloud ecosystem. Wasabi was conceived for the multi-cloud world.  We believe customers should have the freedom to pick and choose the cloud services that best meet their particular functional needs and budget requirements. And we believe cloud storage should be a simple, standard, affordable commodity like electricity.

You can move data in and out of Wasabi quickly and easily using a variety of commercial or open-source tools.  Wasabi is compatible with Amazon’s popular S3 API, which means it works with hundreds of data management solutions.  You can build and run your applications on your compute cloud of choice, and store your data on Wasabi—the industry’s lowest-cost and fastest-performing storage cloud.  You can even use Wasabi in conjunction with other cloud storage services or on-premises storage platforms.

Unlike Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform we don’t charge egress fees to lock you in.  We’re confident you’ll love the price and performance benefits of Wasabi hot cloud storage.  If for some reason you don’t, you can move your data out of Wasabi without transfer fees.

To IBM, Wasabi says welcome to the multi-cloud world.