Farewell, Blue Cloud. we'll miss you. But your kids are looking good!
When IBM
IBM sees its diversity of offerings as a competitive advantage. The new cloud computing products range from custom-built blade servers with pre-installed VMware
That last option sounds fairly similar to Amazon.com's
Oh, and IBM really doesn't seem to play favorites -- EC2 images run on Xen virtual servers from Citrix Systems
What's in a name?
And this is what became of the Blue Cloud project; you won't hear that catchy name from here on out. Ric Telford, IBM's VP of cloud services, told me in a phone interview that "Blue Cloud was never a brand name, more of an initiative. This is it, what we announced today."
It's a shame, really, but earwig code names in the high-tech world have a way of disappearing just when you'd want to hear them the most. Advanced Micro Devices
The Blue Cloud name screams "IBM!" at you and would have made a fine marketing tool. CloudBurst and Smart Business -- the new names for IBM's cloud services -- do have some punch but lack the obvious Big Blue-ness. I think it's a wasted opportunity to trade on Big Blue's famous nickname.
It all looks like a solid business plan with an IBM-scale breadth that few other companies (and none of the current competition) can match. It's just a shame about the name change.
Further Foolishness atop Cloud Nine: