IBM To Move SmartCloud Enterprise Customers to SoftLayer

November 4, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM launched its SmartCloud Enterprise infrastructure cloud service back in the spring of 2011, and it was at that time five years behind industry juggernaut Amazon Web Services. In part to make good on its promises to grow cloud revenues and in part to get a broader set of customers and technologies, IBM bought cloud provider SoftLayer in June. And now it is warning customers that they will have to move to SoftLayer clouds.

The rumors about the transition from SmartCloud Enterprise to SoftLayer popped up late last week after some industry analysts caught wind of the forced–and entirely expected–migration from one cloud to the other. Customers have also been warned of the coming changes. Here is the statement that IBM gave The Four Hundred on the transition:

“On 8 July 2013, IBM completed the acquisition of SoftLayer, the industry’s only seamlessly unified global cloud computing infrastructure. SoftLayer will be the foundation of IBM’s cloud portfolio and clients will have access to SoftLayer capabilities delivering higher performance and vastly enhanced functionality. IBM’s continued focus is to provide its clients the best capabilities and technologies to help achieve better business performance.”

“As part of this effort, IBM has requested that clients migrate eligible IBM SmartCloud Enterprise (SCE) workloads to the SoftLayer cloud environment. IBM is offering at no charge, use of a fast and easy migration tool to streamline the migration. We feel confident that these tools and our supporting documentation will lead clients to a successful migration.”

“Migration to the SoftLayer environment must be complete for IBM SmartCloud Enterprise customers no later than 31 January 2014, at which time access to SmartCloud Enterprise will no longer be available. SmartCloud Enterprise+ will continue for clients’ managed cloud workloads and is unaffected by this announcement.”

The SmartCloud Enterprise public cloud is based on X86 iron and is aimed at generic uses and supports Windows and Linux virtual machines, while SmartCloud Enterprise+ is a fully managed infrastructure cloud that was created using both X86, Power, and System z machines. The wonder is why IBM doesn’t just transfer the people supporting SmartCloud Enterprise+ and the underlying systems and customer accounts to SoftLayer as well. IBM will have to pick a brand for its cloud as well, choosing either SmartCloud or SoftLayer if it doesn’t want to confuse potential customers.