After locking horns last year, Google and IBM are now collaborating to catch their larger cloud services competitors.
Whether the union is a strategic masterstroke or a marriage of convenience, it promises greater flexibility for enterprise customers making the shift to so-called “compute and storage†services in the cloud.
Google recently began offering Big Blue’s Power processors to large corporations using its Google Cloud platform. The partnership was announced just months after the public disputeOpens a new window among its scientists over competing claims of game-changing “quantum supremacy†supercomputer technology.
IBM is now managing its once-proprietary hardware and software that connects to Google’s cloud server farms with low-latency network fiber. A customizable, micro-service API provides access to the Google platform built for artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytic workloads.
The power of two
The goal, Google saysOpens a new window , is to give on-premises users of IBM’s computing, storage and networking services an avenue for moving applications and data into the hybrid cloud structures that many large corporations favor.
Piggybacking also leverages capabilities and customers in pursuit of No. 1-ranked Amazon Web Services and No. 2 Microsoft Azure. Both those Silicon Valley rivals command larger shares of the fast-growing marketOpens a new window for cloud services.
Google Cloud ranks a distant third to AWS, while IBM sits fifth on the list behind Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is building a data center business in its domestic market. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, and IBM are banking on the combined whole being greater than the sum of the parts each is contributing to the service.
For IBM, that means management of processing based on the ninth iterationOpens a new window of the architecture that it began using decades ago in servers and desktop computers. The company wrapped versions of the architecture for different operating systems into the Power umbrella brand in 2008.
Enterprise compatibility
With IBM’s contribution, Google Cloud’s as-a-service product now lets users run software compatible with:
- The AIX operating system that IBM developed for UNIX.
- The iOS system that IBMs built for Apple’s watches and phones.
- The open-source Linux operating system, a version of which is produced by the Red Hat subsidiary that IBM bought last year.
In fact, Big Blue’s $34 billion outlay for Red Hat drove its decision to put Power’s blueprints in the public domain.
IBM touts its architecture, which is also at work in a pair of federal government supercomputers, as the only commercially-practical option for enterprises trying to optimize their racks and software stacks.
Virtual machines let enterprise customers access that efficiencyOpens a new window and expand it on a subscription basis. Built using the Kubernetes containers pioneered by Google, the API lets users replicate stacks and manage them in the cloud.
A web console mirrors similar controls available for Google Cloud services, incorporating IBM Power functions for shared and dedicated cores and with unified billing and support. Command-line tools operate as extensions of the function sets for Google services.
Sustainable development
Like Kubernetes, which Google put into the public domain in 2015, IBM’s Kabanero software interface for the containers also is open-source. Coupled with the expandability and flexibility that are cloud hallmarks, enterprises can adapt the tech to the needs of employees and business lines.
That same willingness is evident in the IBM-Google partnership that stems from a desire to differentiate their products from market-leading AWS. The Amazon subsidiary holds more than 40% of the global market, compared to around 4% for Google Cloud and still less for IBM Cloud.
Google in 2016 shifted a small portion of its processorsOpens a new window  away from Intel’s x86 architecture, which dominates motherboard real estate in most data centers. In the interim, big changes have continued apace at Big Blue.
Not long after Power’s arrival on the Google Cloud, IBM’s board installed a new chief executiveOpens a new window who reflects the company’s transformation to software products.
In the end, IBM’s ability to lead customers to the hybrid structures it sees as the future of enterprise computing will determine the sustainability of its business model and its partnership with Google.