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IBM Cloud

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IBM Cloud
DeveloperIBM
Typecloud computing, IaaS, PaaS, cloud services, Web service
Websitewww.ibm.com/cloud

IBM Cloud is a cloud computing platform offered by the information technology company IBM that provides a suite of services including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), serverless, Cloud storage, disaster recovery and backup, and managed cloud services.[1] The IBM Cloud platform supports public cloud, private cloud, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployment models with an emphasis on enterprise security, governance, and regulated workloads.

Overview

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The IBM Cloud platform combines infrastructure and platform services into a single environment accessible through the IBM Cloud console, CLI, APIs, and infrastructure‑as‑code tools. IBM Cloud is used to deploy and manage applications, data, and services across public cloud regions, on‑premises environments, and other cloud platforms.

IBM Cloud represents a strategic approach to cloud computing that prioritizes enterprise-grade reliability, security, and customization. It is engineered for organizations with complex regulatory requirements, legacy system integration needs, and mission-critical workloads.[2]

Architecture and Infrastructure

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IBM Cloud supports hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployment models, which enables organizations to run and manage workloads across public cloud, private cloud, on-premises environments, and other cloud platforms from different providers [3]. This approach is commonly used by enterprises seeking flexibility in workload placement while maintaining centralized governance and security controls.

IBM Cloud integrates with container orchestration management technologies such as Red Hat OpenShift, allowing applications to be deployed and operated consistently across heterogenous environments include multiple public clouds and on-premises infrastructure [4]. This model supports applications portability and reduces dependency on a single cloud provider.

The platform is frequently used in industries with regulatory and operational requirements, such as financial services, healthcare, and government, where hybrid and multi-cloud architectures and employed to address data residency, compliance, and risk management considerations [5].

Global Data Centers
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As of 2026, IBM states that its cloud infrastructure spans more than 60 data centers across 19 countries and six multizone regions.[6] The platform is organized into regions and availability zones designed to provide fault tolerance and high availability. IBM has establish availability zones in major markets including [7]:

  • North America (Dallas, Washington D.C., San Jose, Toronto, Montreal)
  • South America (Sao Paulo)
  • Europe (London, Frankfurt, Madrid, London, Paris, Amsterdam)
  • Asia-Pacific (Tokyo, Osaka, Sydney, Singapore, Chennai)

Each availability zone is an isolated physical location within a region with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. [8]

Products and services

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IBM Cloud provides a suite of over 190 products and services, focusing on hybrid cloud, AI and security. Key offerings include Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud for Kubernetes, IBM watsonx, IBM Cloud Paks for containerized software and secure infrastructure like Bare-metal servers. The platform supports enterprise workloads across financial services and other industries with a focus on compliance and security. IBM Cloud offers standard cloud computing services including [9]:

  • Compute: Virtual servers, bare metal servers, and Serverless computing through IBM Cloud Code Engine
  • Storage: Object storage, block storage, and file storage
  • Networking: Virtual private clouds, load balancers, and content delivery networks
  • Databases: Managed database services including Db2, PostgresSQL, and MongoDB
  • AI and Data: Including watsonx, Instruct Lab on IBM Cloud

Hybrid Cloud and OpenShift

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Through its acquisition of Red Hat, IBM positions OpenShift as a central layer for deploying and managing applications consistently across environments. This approach allows enterprises to avoid vendor lock-in by using Open source technologies, maintain workloads across multiple cloud providers, and gradually modernize legacy applications.[10]

Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

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IBM Cloud offers a fully managed Red Hat OpenShift service that automates the deployment and ongoing management of OpenShift clusters. The service provides several key lifecycle management features.[11]

Automated updates and patching

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IBM Cloud handles automated provisioning and updates for the OpenShift configuration and underlying infrastructure including operating system security patches.[12][13]

History

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SoftLayer

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SoftLayer Technologies, Inc.
Company type
Subsidiary
IndustryHosting
Founded2005 (2005)
FounderLance Crosby
HeadquartersDallas, Texas, USA
ProductsDedicated Hosting, Managed Services
ParentIBM (since 2013)
ASN
Websitesoftlayer.com

SoftLayer Technologies, Inc. (now IBM Cloud) was a dedicated server, managed hosting, and cloud computing provider, founded in 2005 and acquired by IBM in 2013. SoftLayer initially specialized in hosting workloads for gaming companies and startups, but shifted focus to enterprise workloads after its acquisition.[14]

SoftLayer had bare-metal compute offerings before other large cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services.[15]

SoftLayer has hosted workloads for companies such as The Hartford, WhatsApp, Whirlpool, Daimler, and Macy's.[16]

Timeline

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  • Year 2005: SoftLayer was established in 2005 by Lance Crosby and several of his ex-coworkers.[17]
  • Year 2010 - August: GI Partners acquired a majority equity stake in SoftLayer in August 2010.[18]
  • Year 2010 - November: In November of that year it merged the company with The Planet Internet Services, SoftLayer's biggest competitor, and consolidated the customer base under the SoftLayer brand.[19][20]
  • Year 2011 - Q1: In Q1 2011, the company reported hosting more than 81,000 servers for more than 26,000 customers in locations throughout the United States.[21]
  • Year 2011 - July: In July 2011, the company announced plans for international expansion to Amsterdam and Singapore to add to the existing network of North American-based data centers in Dallas (Texas), San Jose (California), Seattle (Washington), Houston (Texas) and Washington, D.C.[22] Most of these data centers were leased via Digital Realty.[23]
  • Year 2013 June 4: On June 4, 2013, IBM announced its acquisition of SoftLayer under undisclosed financial terms, in a deal that according to Reuters could have fetched more than $2 billion,[24] to form an IBM Cloud Services Division.[25][26] At the time of acquisition, SoftLayer was described as the biggest privately held cloud infrastructure provider (IaaS) in the world.[27]
  • Year 2015 - May: As of May 2015, the company has 23 data centers in 11 different countries.[28]
  • Year 2018: By 2018, SoftLayer was renamed to IBM Cloud.[29]

Initial launch of Bluemix (2013–2016)

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In June 2013, IBM acquired SoftLayer, a public cloud platform, to serve as the foundation for its IaaS offering. Bluemix was announced for public beta in February 2014[30] after having been developed since early 2013.[31] Bluemix was based on the open source Cloud Foundry project and ran on SoftLayer infrastructure. IBM announced the general availability of the Bluemix Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering in July 2014.[32]

By April 2015, Bluemix included a suite of over 100 cloud-based development tools "including social, mobile, security, analytics, database, and IoT (internet of things).[33] Bluemix had grown to 83,000 users in India with growth of approximately 10,000 users each month.[33]

A year after announcement, Bluemix had made little headway in the cloud-computing platform space relative to its competition, and remained substantially behind market leaders Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.[34] By August 2016, little had changed in market acceptance of the Bluemix offering.[35] In February 2016,[36] IBM Bluemix includes IBM's Function as a Service (FaaS) system, or Serverless computing offering, that is built using open source[37] from the Apache OpenWhisk incubator project largely credited[38] to IBM for seeding. This system, equivalent to Amazon Lambda, Microsoft Azure Functions, Oracle Cloud Fn or Google Cloud Functions, allows calling of a specific function in response to an event without requiring any resource management from the developer.[39]

Re-brand to IBM Cloud (2017)

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In May 2017 IBM released Kubernetes support as the IBM Bluemix Container Service, later renamed to the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service (IKS).[40] IKS was built using the open source Kubernetes project. This system, equivalent to Amazon Web Services EKS, Microsoft Azure AKS, or Google Cloud GKE, aims to provide a platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts. In October 2017, IBM announced that they would rebrand their cloud as IBM Cloud brand, merging all components, thus retiring the Bluemix and Softlayer brands.[41]

Red Hat Acquisition

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In March 2018, IBM launched an industry first managed Kubernetes service on bare metal.[42] In October 2018, IBM announced its intent to acquire Red Hat, Inc for approximately $34 billion [43] representing IBM's largest acquisition in its history [44]. The acquisition was completed in July 2019. In August 2019, 3 weeks after the close of Red Hat acquisition, IBM launched a managed Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud.[45] IBM stated the acquisition would position the company as "the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider" by combining Red Hat's open source technologies, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift with IBM's existing cloud infrastructure.

The Red Hat acquisition shaped IBM's cloud strategy, with the company focusing on hybrid cloud solutions that allow enterprises to run workloads across on-premises infrastructure, private clouds, and multiple public cloud platforms. [46]

Financial Services

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In November 2019, IBM has announced that it had designed the world's first financial services-ready public cloud and that Bank of America was its first committed collaborator and anchor customer, joined shortly thereafter in 2020 by BNP Paribas as its first European anchor client.[47] IBM announced in April 2021 the general availability of IBM Cloud for Financial Services, including support for Red Hat OpenShift and other cloud-native technologies.[48] In July 2021, it was announced that SAP is onboarding two of its finance and data management solutions to IBM Cloud for Financial Services.[49] In September 2021, it was CaixaBank's turn to boost digital capabilities with IBM Cloud for Financial Services[50] and onboarding to new IBM Cloud Multizone Region in Spain.[51]

Partnerships

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IBM has held long‑term technology partnerships with organizations in sports and entertainment, where cloud computing, data management, and analytics platforms support large‑scale digital experiences for global audiences.

IBM has maintained a multi‑decade technology partnership with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) to support the digital platforms of the US Open Tennis Championships, including the tournament’s official website and mobile applications, which deliver real‑time match data and analytics to over 14 million fans worldwide [52].

In 2019, IBM partnered with the USTA to provide new AI-powered tools for the US Open.[53]

In May 2020, IBM announced agreements with six European companies, including Osram and Crédit Mutuel, that use IBM Cloud to access advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain and analytics.[citation needed]

IBM has also collaborated with The Masters Tournament, the annual golf championship held at Augusta National Golf Club, to support digital experiences for the event. The partnership spans several decades and includes cloud‑based systems used to manage tournament data and deliver content through the Masters website and mobile applications. [54]

In motorsport, IBM has entered into a multi‑year partnership with Scuderia Ferrari, under which IBM provides cloud, data, and analytics technologies that support Ferrari’s digital platforms and fan‑facing applications. The collaboration is focused on enhancing digital engagement through cloud‑based services. [55]

Reviews

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IBM Cloud continued to be considered a leader in bare-metal in 2020, and distinguished itself by providing over 11 million possible custom configurations with the latest Power, Intel, and AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.[56]

Sustainability

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In 2021, IBM announced it would achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, [57] and has introduced tools such as the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator to help customers measure and manage the environmental impact of their cloud workloads. [58]

References

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  1. ^ "What is the IBM Cloud platform?". IBM Cloud Docs. 30 January 2026. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  2. ^ "Cloud Market Share Trends - Big Three Together Hold 63%". Synergy Research Group. November 19, 2025. Retrieved May 4, 2026.
  3. ^ Mell, Peter; Grance, Timothy (2011). "The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, Special Publication (NIST SP)". National Institute of Standards and Technology (Special Publication (NIST SP) - 800-145). Gaithersburg, MD. doi:10.6028/NIST.SP.800-145.
  4. ^ "What is OpenShift?". Solo.io. Retrieved April 14, 2026.
  5. ^ "Cloud Computing Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud), By Service (Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS)), By Enterprise Type (SMEs and Large Enterprises), By Industry (BFSI, IT and Telecommunications, Government, Consumer Goods and Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2026 – 2034 Source: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/cloud-computing-market-102697" (PDF). Fortune Business Insights. Retrieved April 14, 2026. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  6. ^ "Cloud Infrastructure Solutions". IBM.com. IBM. Retrieved 21 August 2025. The IBM Cloud approach to IaaS lets you scale… around the world in more than 60 data centers… 60 data centers across 19 countries.
  7. ^ "IBM Cloud global data centers". IBM. Retrieved May 3, 2026.
  8. ^ Ferranti, Marc (June 11, 2018). "IBM launches new availability zones worldwide for hybrid enterprise clouds". Retrieved May 4, 2026.
  9. ^ "What is the IBM Cloud platform?". IBM Cloud. Last updated 2026-01-30. Retrieved May 4, 2026. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Kalavala, Bala (December 16, 2024). "Containerisation: The Cornerstone Of Multi-Cloud And Hybrid Cloud Success". Open Source For U. Retrieved May 4, 2026.
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  21. ^ Miller, Rich (May 17, 2011). "SoftLayer: $78 Million in First Quarter Revenue". datacenterknowledge.com. Archived from the original on October 25, 2020. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  22. ^ Rich Miller (July 26, 2011). "SoftLayer Goes Global With its Network". Data Center Knowledge. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  23. ^ "Digital Realty Signs SoftLayer to Data Centre Lease in Singapore". News release. October 10, 2011. Archived from the original on December 17, 2021. Retrieved December 16, 2021.
  24. ^ Saba, Jennifer. "IBM to buy website hosting service SoftLayer". reuters.com. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved June 4, 2013.
  25. ^ "IBM to Acquire SoftLayer to Accelerate Adoption of Cloud Computing in the Enterprise: IBM to Form New Cloud Services Division". News release. IBM. June 4, 2013. Archived from the original on June 8, 2013. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  26. ^ "IBM (IBM) to Acquire Public Cloud Provider SoftLayer". Street Insider. Retrieved June 4, 2013.
  27. ^ Holland, Maggie (9 October 2014) IBM and SoftLayer: What a difference a year makes Archived 2018-06-21 at the Wayback Machine ITPro, Retrieved 18 May 2015
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  29. ^ SoftLayer's new name: IBM Cloud, 2018 [1] IBM, Retrieved 18 January 2019
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  33. ^ a b IBM Bluemix finds converts from Amazon, Azure in India, The Times of India, 16 May 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  34. ^ Gartner shows two-horse race in IaaS cloud: AWS and Microsoft Azure: A “year of reckoning” leaves all other vendors behind, Brandon Butler, NetworkWorld, 20 May 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  35. ^ AWS, Microsoft Azure Top Gartner's Magic Quadrant For IaaS, Charles Babcock, InformationWorld, 8 August 2016. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  36. ^ "IBM Launches Bluemix OpenWhisk, an Event-driven Programming Service". 22 February 2016. Archived from the original on 23 January 2022. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
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  38. ^ "apache/incubator-openwhisk". GitHub. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
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  40. ^ "Kubernetes now available on IBM Cloud Container Service". IBM. 22 April 2024.
  41. ^ "Bluemix is now IBM Cloud: Build confidently with 170+ services". IBM. Archived from the original on 2018-10-20. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
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  43. ^ Feiner, Lauren (July 9, 2019). "IBM closes its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat". CNBC. Retrieved May 4, 2026.
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  45. ^ "Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud: Power of Kubernetes, Expertise of IBM". IBM. 22 April 2024.
  46. ^ "The $34 Billion Big Blue – Red Hat Deal". Valasys Media. Last update November 19, 2025. Retrieved May 4, 2026. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  47. ^ "IBM and Bank of America Advance IBM Cloud for Financial Services, BNP Paribas Joins as Anchor Client in Europe". IBM Newsroom. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  48. ^ "De-Risking Cloud Consumption: IBM Cloud for Financial Services". 10 November 2021.
  49. ^ "SAP jumps aboard IBM Cloud for Financial Services". 30 July 2021.
  50. ^ "CaixaBank boosts digital capabilities with IBM Cloud for Financial Services; Onboards to New IBM Cloud Multizone Region in Spain" (Press release).
  51. ^ "IBM creates new cloud multi-zone region in Spain". 15 September 2021.
  52. ^ "Sponsors/IBM". 2023. Retrieved April 10, 2026.
  53. ^ "How IBM is delivering AI-generated highlights at the US Open". September 8, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2021.
  54. ^ "IBM Debuts New AI Enabled Digital Experiences for the 90th Masters Tournament". IBM Newsroom. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  55. ^ "Scuderia Ferrari HP announces a multi-year agreement with IBM as a Premium Partner". Ferrari.com. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  56. ^ Athow, Desire (February 3, 2020). "Best bare-metal hosting in 2020". TechRadar. Retrieved 2020-08-05.
  57. ^ Moss, Sebastian (February 17, 2021). "IBM promises to be net zero by 2030". www.datacenterdynamics.com. Archived from the original on 2022-01-03. Retrieved 2022-01-03.
  58. ^ "Ljk Design 2024". Carbon Calculator. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
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