Why Open Source Could Be IBM's Key To Future Success In The Cloud

Ask most developers what they think of IBM and you will get a blank look in response. "IB-Who?" In our brave new cloud world, IBM, once so compelling with CIO's golf calendars, is usually a last-minute idea for developers looking to deploy to the cloud. And yet, there are still good reasons to consider Big Blue, especially for companies that have significant investments in IBM.

However, instead of asking IBM, which tends to give antiquated answers like "because we are with Java", I spoke with the executive director of the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin, who gave me a more convincing answer: because IBM has a deep experience in decision making. Open source work in the company.

Snoring through Java

When Thomas Claburn asked IBM's Java technology director, John Duimovich, to justify the existence of the company's cloud to developers, the answer was far from convincing:

•     In the Java space, we are the experts. We have hardware experts. Actually, we have redesigned the [power processor] architecture instructions and [our mainframe] Z over the years to provide better Java support. We have our own JVM, OpenJ9, which has recently opened this year. That has advanced functions that give the same performance for half the memory, for example.

Excited a lot? Of course, IBM has a deep Java bank, but that is not the first requirement of companies looking to move workloads to the cloud. Instead, they are eager to access the suite of services offered by companies such as AWS, Microsoft and Google, with the need for virtual machines to be completely ignored. IBM's work with JVM can be nice, but it's not what kids in the cloud want.

 (Also, it's worth noting that AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud make it easy enough to create Java applications - perhaps the IBM cloud is more optimized for Java applications, if that's not enough to offset all your needs, other deficiencies, services-wise.)

Making open source great again

Although the cloud has become the "hardware" of choice for a new generation of developers, the software language they speak is still open source. In the open source world, few companies can claim as much experience as IBM.

"IBM is the organization that put Linux on the map, people forget it," Zemlin told me. IBM, he continued, "has invested billions of its own capital, tens of billions of its own labor, and over time has created hundreds of billions of value for customers."

People forget this, but IBM is behind much of the boring behind-the-scenes work that made open source safe for developers, whether they use the badge of a Fortune 500 company or work outside their parent's basement. IBM is also behind "some of the world's largest technical implementations," based on "open source maybe not to build the next Facebook," but to build a supply chain management application to track the provenance of diamonds. bloody, using blockchain and hyperledger to track Walmart's food supply chain, "said Zemlin.

Make open source payments

An example is Hyperledger, an open source project born in IBM. As Zemlin says, IBM contributed the hyperledger code to the Linux Foundation because "they saw the need for a chain of blocks without cryptocurrencies and they had a code base and a group of organizations that wanted to make collective innovation."

Of course, IBM is not doing this for peace, love and open source. While the company has had financial difficulties for years, its commitment to open source has not diminished, as the company believes that open source driven by developers is the natural complement to its proprietary hardware and software businesses. IBM needs developers.

 Do the same developers need IBM? Developers certainly benefit from IBM's open source investments, but it is not so clear that those same developers have much to gain from the IBM cloud. Google, for example, has done a stellar job of open source code such as TensorFlow and Kubernetes that feeds naturally in the execution of related workloads in Google Cloud Platform. In addition to promoting its bona fides in Java, IBM has yet to demonstrate that developers derive significant benefits for modern workloads in their cloud.

This is IBM's great challenge: to translate its open source experience into real and differentiated value for developers in its cloud.