IBM Adds Disaster Recovery Services to SoftLayer

IBM (IBM) is updating the cloud services available to SoftLayer customers with the addition of disaster recovery and managed security services. Big Blue is aiming to dig deeper into two growing cloud markets that both are expected to grow over the next few years.

With the addition of IBM Business Continuity and Resilience Services (BCRS) for SoftLayer, IBM is looking to capture part of what will be a $32 billion market by 2015. It’s an area of technology that IBM has played in for quite some time, but more in a traditional IT sense. The cloud element isn’t exactly new, but the expansion to its SoftLayer platform as a service (PaaS) is.

Initially, SoftLayer customers will have access to IBM’s Cloud Virtualized Server Recovery (VSR) managed service, which was designed to offer sophisticated, low-cost automation enabling enterprises to recover mission-critical applications, servers and cloud-based data in the event of an outage or disaster. SoftLayer-enabled business will be able to use VSR to replicate entire systems in real time—from system files, databases and applications to user data in a way that is independent of the make and model of the underlying hardware.

In conjunction with the launch, IBM also has plans to open two new cloud-based resiliency centers in Raleigh, N.C., and Mumbai, India. The two new facilities complement the existing 15 global data centers planned by SoftLayer and the 150 BCRS resiliency centers.

Big Blue is also delving more deeply into the cloud-based managed security service market with the launch of Managed Security Services for SoftLayer. Again, the company is looking to capitalize on a growing market—and a topic that 70 percent of chief information security officers are concerned about.

But the addition of security services for SoftLayer is only the beginning. IBM plans to expand on this announcement later this year with additional security services on SoftLayer. The planned services include enhanced distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, web and email protection, and managed endpoint protection.