IBM Brings Out Newest MobileFirst Foundation Systems

By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer

With the cloud's prominence only gaining, that brings to light a greater demand than ever for tools designed to improve the cloud and let businesses get more use out of it. The next generation of IBM (News - Alert) MobileFirst Foundation systems looks to help on that front by giving developers some useful new tools to speed up development.

IBM MobileFirst Foundation 8.0 offers up some great new options, including flexible deployment tools. With these, developers can provision an IBM MobileFirst Foundation environment instantly, at last report, allowing users to start small and expand outward as needed. That makes the app development process much more rapid, and reduces both time to market and costs.

It's not just greater speed, though; IBM MobileFirst Foundation can now offer enhanced security with a built-in framework that allows better protection against mobile-specific threats. Since a lot of what accesses cloud-based systems is mobile, that means better protection overall against the biggest threat. Plus, live updates help ensure that security is kept up to date, and up to date security is a major protective measure against potential problems. It's not only for security, however, as live updates improve efficiency as well by offering the latest fixes to current problems.

Throw in some new and powerful mobile analytics tools to let developers know what's working and what isn't with current systems, and even application programming interface (API) specific tools like API Connect, and IBM's new system proves itself a major force in cloud-based development.

IBM vice president of MobileFirst and Smarter Process, Michael Gilfix, commented “Demand for cloud continues to skyrocket and mobile applications are the driving force behind that demand within the enterprise. Uniquely designed for the cloud, the new IBM MobileFirst Foundation meets the need for speed and productivity in mobile application development without compromising security.”

With IDC (News - Alert) recently releasing reports that suggest cloud infrastructure spending will hit the $57.8 billion mark in 2020, and represent nearly half—47.9 percent—of all enterprise IT infrastructure spending, it's clear why IBM, and everyone else involved in cloud operations, is pushing as hard as we're seeing. Everyone wants a piece of that market. As Gilfix noted, that's a lot of market in one place, and with so many of IBM's former markets starting to buckle—like the desktop PC market—it's easy to see why IBM wants in on that major new market as early as possible.

Cloud development is going to be a major part of business for some time to come, and IBM is likely to do what it can to keep its hand in that particular cookie jar. There's too much at stake to pass it up, and with what IBM's done so far already, it's already got a good position to hold.