IBM Corp. is stepping up its hybrid-cloud push as it bids to become the go-to service provider for companies that use multiple public and private cloud platforms.

The use of “multiclouds” is becoming quite common, with the IBM Institute for Business Value estimating that 98 percent of all organizations will adopt hybrid information technology architectures by 2021. Companies are doing so in order to take advantage of each cloud platform’s unique capabilities, but they face difficulties in doing so for lack of consistent tools to manage and integrate multiple clouds.

That explains why IBM is adding to its hybrid cloud tools and services offerings. At the IBM Think conference in San Francisco today, the company announced a new Cloud Integration Platform that’s meant to make it easier to roll out software applications across multiple clouds. It also announced new services to help manage resources across cloud environments and secure the data and applications that reside in them.

The IBM Cloud Integration Platform serves as the main basis of the company’s new hybrid cloud play, connecting applications, software and services across public and private clouds and on-premises systems. The platform provides integration tools for these apps that are accessible from a single development environment, meaning that developers need to write, test and secure their code only once before rolling it out to the most suitable cloud.

The new platform is being offered alongside new IBM services for cloud strategy and design. IBM is offering to help companies manage IT resources across their hybrid cloud infrastructures. In addition, IBM is launching a new Cloud Advisory consulting service that goes even further by helping customers architect their entire cloud strategies from beginning to end. IBM said teams will use open and secure multicloud strategies and its Cloud Innovate method and tools to support clients with application development, migration, modernization and management.

Naturally, security is another big concern for any enterprise adopting a multicloud strategy, and for that reason IBM also announced new services to help safeguard cloud workloads. The IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Service provides encryption key management via a dedicated cloud hardware security module based on FIPS 140-2 level 4-based technology.

“IBM is executing in its pivot in towards hybrid cloud offerings, in combination with the new capabilities it receives from Red Hat,” which it said last fall it would acquire in a $34 billion deal, said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. “As such, IBM needs to create new layers that abstract different public clouds and on-premises capabilities, and IBM Cloud Integration Platforms is doing exactly that. But to be successful, enterprises also want services, so IBM is adding these for the management and operation of a multicloud environments.”

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