“Cloud is everywhere,” said the IBM‘s Don Boulia, VP of Cloud Services. The company is positioning itself as the ideal candidate to help the enterprise access cloud without sacrificing their systems of record. IBM is moving traditional middleware closer to the cloud and, explained Boulia, focusing on “deploying in different types of cloud, deploying as a service, and integration between clouds.”

He went on to explain that integration between clouds is an area of primary focus because it functions as a “bridge between systems of record,” where most IBM middleware runs, “and systems of engagement,” like Bluemix.

Since customers are turning overwhelmingly towards “choice and flexibility,” Boulia said, “portability is key.” IBM sees integration as a buffer that allows clients to connect back to a traditional database, he added. A mobile app may be the face of a company, but in order to operate effectively, it must “flow back” to where “most of the interesting data still lives.” IBM sees middleware as the ideal to help companies manage “those areas between two clouds.”

Middleware Capabilities and IBM’s Adaptations

Boulia listed IBM middleware’s major themes as “run times, messaging, and integration.” These aspects of middleware he described as “present in both systems of record and systems of engagement.” A focus on providing end to end management is evident in capabilities like “performance monitoring” and “management of IT systems,” that have presence in both traditional and cloud use pieces, said Boulia.

Market interest in cloud is primarily driven by things like mobile, Boulia remarked. Cloud has invigorated an “reimagining” of middleware for new use cases. “We ended up doing some pretty deep changes to how it’s managed, how it’s deployed, and how it behaves in an operational environment,” Boulia said. A lot of those changes are designed to help users do more “with automation, with policy,” and, Boulia added, make resources more scalable.

Above all, Boulia said, “cloud storage is a big deal.” And the tech giant sees middleware as the solution to the problem of integration between “on-prem systems of record and object, file-based storage mediums [clients] might have on cloud.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect.

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