IBM is adding to its SoftLayer platform by introducing extra security and disaster recovery services, hoping to allay fears about critical data loss in the cloud. Its disaster recovery-as-a-service is able to recover workloads running on IBM’s AIX, Windows or Linux “within minutes” according to a video announcing the product.

The announcement, which was made earlier this week, came just before VMware made its own move into disaster recovery with the launch of VMware vCloud Hybrid Service – Disaster Recovery. VMware is hoping to take advantage of its leading position in datacenter virtualization by adding disaster recovery functionality in its vCenter management console.

VMware’s offering provides disaster recovery for its ESX hypervisor virtual machines, but IBM made no such reference to any specific type of machine. Instead it refers to it being used with apps running on Unix AIX, Windows and Linux. AIX gives IBM a specific advantage as it uses its own form of virtualization that means VMware is unable to recover its workloads.

Essentially, what IMB’s doing is making its Virtual Server Recovery (VSR) service available via its SoftLayer data centers. SoftLayer is IBM’s high-performance, self-service Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering. Later, it plans to expand VSR to incorporate a wider range of services under something called Business Continuity and Resilience Services.

With VSR, the recovery of cloud-based data, servers and apps is automated. Entire systems are replicated independently in real-time, including database dependencies, user data, applications and system files.

In future, IBM is planning to add Resiliency Consulting Services to the SoftLayer cloud. This will enable the integration of legacy IT environments with SoftLayer’s public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service and private clouds. It helps companies to assess which apps need greater resiliency and how to implement this.

At the same time, IBM is planning to add two new cloud-based resiliency centers to the 150 it already operates, in Raleigh, N.C., and Mumbai, India. This is in addition to the 15 new SoftLayer data centers it’s already announced for this year. These new additions will ensure its resiliency service is available in many parts of the world, allowing data to remain close to its point of origin and cutting network latency.

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