IBM this week unveiled a new platform for developers to collaborate with it on a newly-released set of open source technologies. IBM plans to release 50 projects into the open source community, it claims, to speed up enterprise adoption it claims is waning and nudge a new class of cloud innovations around mobile, analytics and other high-growth areas.
IBM’s new developerWorks Open is a cloud-based environment on which developers can access emerging IBM technologies, technical expertise and collaborate with a global network of other developers to try and speed up projects of many diverse types. Developers can not only expect to download the code, but also have access to blogs, videos, tools and techniques to accelerate their efforts.
IBM is terraforming Open Source stardust with its impetus behind open source talent
Dr Angel Diaz
IBM’s stated goal is to help them to act with speed and confidence to build and deploy open source apps working with clients’ demanding business requirements.
IBM believes that the current model of development in the open source community lacks a strategic focus on business requirements. To address this, IBM is launching a set of projects in industries including healthcare, mobile, retail, insurance and banking that meet the real-world business challenges it thinks others have missed.
IBM is no stranger to the open source movement, having been at the forefront of initiatives such as Apache, Linux, Eclipse and most recently Spark, Docker, Cloud Foundry and OpenStack .IBM has thousands of developers working on open source projects.
Luring developers into its deep blue ecosystem
With these initiatives, IBM hopes to lure new developers into its cloud ecosystem to fuel new apps and growth for its cloud initiatives and spur innovation around open clouds.
IBM’s claims its cloud revenues are up 70% year-to-year in the second quarter and the first half of the third. Over the last 12 months their total cloud revenue was $8.7bn and they saw strong growth in their as-a-service offerings with second quarter revenue at $4.5 billion.
Among the range of technologies already deployed on developerWorks Open, IBM is making available projects in key areas to help bridge the development gap. It will also offer these services on its programming platform for cloud software development, Bluemix.
IBM Vice President of Cloud Architecture and Technology Dr. Angel Diaz, talking to DCD, was ebulient about IBM’s Open Source position: “The new culture of innovation and Open Source are vital to each other. IBM is terraforming Open Source stardust with its impetus behind open source talent. Only by openly sharing in the way we have done for years with open source can the market be stimulated and grow. Open Source is not a luxury – it is a necessity in today’s market. IBM firmly believes that open source is the foundation of innovative application development in the cloud and that IBM adds value through opening up its technical skills base to young developers who are developing their own culture i.
With developerWorks Open, IBM is open sourcing additional IBM innovations that we feel chave the potential to grow the community and ecosystem and eventually become established technologies.” IBM also announced that it is also partnering with 200 academic institutions across 36 countries including Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkley, Imperial College of Science (England) and International Institute of IT (India) all of whom will use Bluemix in courses such as computer science to entrepreneurship. IBM expects reach 30 thousands students in the first year of the program.
Currently, IBM participates in and contributes to more than 150 open source projects. These projects include Spark, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Open Contain Project, Node.js, CouchDb, Linux, Eclipse and an already established relationship with Apache. Open source projects increase the skills and knowledge base around IBM’s software product set. developerWorks Open is the next step in IBM’s strategy to help businesses create, use, and innovate around cloud computing systems.