An overview of the five available IBM Cloud Paks and how they can help you address your challenges on the journey to cloud.

I’m excited to have the chance to explain a little more about IBM Cloud Paks, a faster, more reliable way to modernize and move to the cloud. These pre-integrated, containerized solutions provide enterprises with a common operating model and relevant set of services that are designed to improve visibility and control across clouds together with a unified and intuitive dashboard.

In this lightboarding video, I explain the stack that supports Cloud Paks and briefly go over the five different Paks that are available.

Learn more about IBM Cloud Paks

• IBM Cloud Paks
• IBM Cloud Pak for Applications
• IBM Cloud Pak for Data
• IBM Cloud Pak for Integration
• IBM Cloud Pak for Automation
• IBM Cloud Pak technical details
• VIDEO – What is OpenShift?
• Kubernetes: An Essential Guide
• Containers: An Essential Guide
• Containerization Explained
• Full playlist of lightboarding videos

Video Transcript

What are IBM Cloud Paks?

Hi everyone, my name is Sai Vennam, and I’m with the IBM Cloud team.

Did you know that, according to a recent study, only 20% of enterprise applications have moved to the cloud?

Well, let’s talk about why exactly that is. We know that container technology is crucial for making that transition to the cloud; but, even with businesses adopting it, they’re still running into a number of roadblocks. Say, for example, that a business is creating a new cloud-native application, but the pace at which it is progressing is much faster than the legacy data layer can scale.

IBM Cloud Paks to address key challenges

Now, this is just one use case. IBM has identified key challenges preventing businesses from moving to the cloud and created what we are calling IBM Cloud Paks.

The stack that supports Cloud Paks

Red Hat OpenShift

Now, let’s start building out the stack that supports Cloud Paks. It starts with Red Hat OpenShift. 

Now OpenShift is their flagship container platform, and, essentially, it’s based on container and Kubernetes technology.

Cloud Paks

So, with Cloud Paks, what we’ve done is we’ve taken IBM middleware packaged it up but, more importantly, optimized it to run directly on top of OpenShift. This means it runs best in an OpenShift or container-based environment.

So, up here, we have Cloud Paks. 

Now since Cloud Packs are supported on OpenShift, now we have to think about where OpenShift is supported—and the great thing is OpenShift is actually supported anywhere. So, any major public cloud provider or maybe on-prem or a private cloud. 

The experience for getting Cloud Paks on IBM Cloud is actually very streamlined, and we will have a future video that goes through that entire experience.

Apps and business logic

Now, we’ve built out the groundwork here, but the last layer that we haven’t mentioned is gonna be the actual applications or the business logic that actually leverages those Cloud Paks. That’s where the user and the customer comes in to actually build-out.

Three tenets of IBM Cloud Paks

Now, there are three key tenets to Cloud Paks that I want to outline.

1. Run anywhere

So, for one, they can run anywhere. We talked about this—regardless of where your OpenShift platform is running, so on-prem or public or private clouds, or even running on IBM Cloud—you can run those Cloud Paks in a fully supported fashion anywhere.

2. Open and secure

Next, we have the idea that they’re open as well as secure.

Now, we mentioned that their built and optimized for OpenShift, which is based on open source technology and principles. This allows you to avoid vendor lock-in and basically run these applications and logic anywhere.

In addition, it’s secure from the ground up. So, essentially, we have security patches as well as updates to the platform, regardless of whether it’s the operating system—OpenShift—or the entire set IBM-certified middleware through the Cloud Paks.

3. Consumable

Now, the last thing that we have here is the fact that they’re consumable. 

Now, Cloud Paks are consumable in the sense that you can not only pay for what you need but also when you need it.

In addition, since we package them up into these five clear use cases that we have here, they essentially allow you to consume the particular solution that you need that is mitigating or preventing you from making the transition to the cloud. 

The five different IBM Cloud Paks

Now we’ll start by actually going through each of these different Cloud Paks.

Cloud Pak for Applications

At the top, we have Cloud Pak for Apps. 

Cloud Pak for Apps essentially allows you to—whether or not you’re creating new cloud-native assets or modernizing an existing application—it allows you to get started on the right foot. 

So, creating a new microservice—you have to think maybe wanted to run on any cloud environment, in addition taking advantage of certified and secure runtimes and capabilities. So, we have the tools to let you do that. 

In addition, so you have legacy infrastructure or application workloads, particularly those based on WebSphere—there are prescribed approaches to modernize those.

Cloud Pak for Data

Next, we have Cloud Pak for Data. 

Now, data is crucial to any application, and over the years (and maybe decades), businesses have accrued lots and lots of data. But, the problem is that the majority of that data is not cataloged or maybe even inaccessible—but businesses know that if they were to leverage all of that data, they can really get new analytics and insights. 

Cloud Pak for Data gives you a single pane, allowing you to connect up all of those data sources, and then start infusing AI and machine learning to derive new insights from those capabilities. That’s the power of this Cloud Pak.

Cloud Pak for Automation

Next, we have Cloud Pak for Automation. 

Now, every business has these everyday mundane tasks—things that can be automated. So, for example, invoices that need to be approved or documents that need to make sure that they’re following the right guidelines. 

Now, this Cloud Pak allows you to automate those everyday processes, allowing your employees to focus on those higher-value tasks.

Cloud Pak for Integration

Next, we have Cloud Pak for Integration.

Now, in previous videos, we’ve talked about this emerging pattern of applications—essentially applications are that are basically hybrid cloud or following a hybrid cloud architecture, so apps that are running legacy on-prem as well as new apps running in the cloud.

Now, those disparate environments, to kind of get them to work holistically, you may take advantage of something like APIs and API management, or maybe you’re taking advantage of a faster protocol something like Messages with Kafka. Regardless, when it comes to integrating these different solutions and having them work with each other, that’s where Cloud Pak for Integration comes in.

Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management

Last, but not least, we have the Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management. 

Now, the future is not just hybrid but also multicloud. This means maybe you’re taking advantage of multiple clouds and multiple public cloud providers. Now, in this case, there are three major things to think about:

• How do you cover all of those environments, so things like security and compliance policies?
• How do you automate deployment of assets to those environments? 
• How do you get visibility—things like metrics and analytics on those apps—or just to make sure that they’re healthy?

That’s where this final Cloud Pak Multicloud Management comes then.

Now, bringing all of this together, we have IBM Cloud Paks, essentially allowing you to reduce your speed for development as well as your operational expenses.