MANILA, Philippines – 9 March, 2015 – IBM today announced that the software and services firm Open 4 Business Online (O4BO) has selected IBM Cloud to host more than 320 of its applications.
The move to SoftLayer cloud from IBM will help O4BO reduce operational costs by 30-40 percent and scale up faster.
Operating from the Philippines, the company specializes in enterprise applications in areas like enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), which cater to small and midsize businesses. O4BO works mostly with customers who have limited internal IT skills, making these organizations highly risk averse in their technology decisions. With the majority of its customer base consisting of small businesses with correspondingly small IT budgets, O4BO needed a cost-effective platform, in a highly secured environment.
To help market its software services, O4BO turned to IBM for a viable cloud architecture that would encourage high levels of availability and consumer confidence. The company now signs new customers and launches applications in less than a day, all within a security-rich platform. O4BO estimates that it could more than double its existing workloads in one month and the solution would have no trouble keeping pace.
“We operate in a space where speed, security, and cost are critical success factors. The move to SoftLayer ensures that we are able to offer stable and affordable services faster, without any compromise on security. Designed from the ground up with security in mind, SoftLayer makes a more effective platform to host our applications,” explained Mike Oliver, founder, Open 4 Business Online.
Customers can access any of these various tools under software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, paying for service on an as-needed basis. O4BO staff can access a common cloud management portal to request new virtual machines and create unique operating instances to support new customer requests in minutes.
With IBM, O4BO has access to a trusted platform that offers customers a security-rich environment that is designed for reliability. SoftLayer is the only infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with a single private network connecting all data centers and network points of presence. The availability of applications on a highly secured cloud platform like SoftLayer instills a high level of confidence in users, helping the software company attract new business.
“At IBM, we are committed to deliver solutions that enable our clients to innovate and bring value to their customers,” said Luis Pineda, president and country general manager, IBM Phillippines. SoftLayer can provide flexibility, control, and security for born-on-the-cloud applications and help small and medium enterprises grow faster.”
