IBM Cloud Services?

I’m kind of surprised, I didn’t even realize that IBM has made some inroads into cloud computing.  I however shouldn’t have been at all surprised, as IBM has made great changes over the years.  Their offering doesn’t seem as well laid out as AWS or Azure but it is a significant presence just being IBM.

IBM Cloud Computing looks like most of the other things the company does these days, which is primarily services based.  I don’t mean web services either, even though I’m sure they use those, but literally services based versus offering actual products, hardware, or some type of applications.  They do have their iNotes and other tools like that in the cloud.  Otherwise it isn’t immediately obvious how their cloud compares to Azure, AWS, vmware or Force.com.  IBM’s website for cloud computing seems as disorganized as vmware’s or Force.com’s, which make Azure and AWS seem super well put together and structured.  With clearly defined features and tools for developing in their respective clouds.

Overall the services look attractive if IBM is already a provider of other services.  Kind of like Azure looks more attractive to the .NET Stack of Developers and AWS looks more attractive to PHP or Java Developers.  Even though both Azure and AWS support .NET, Java, PHP, and more, just from the IaaS or PaaS perspective though.

This begs the questions:

• What are the differences between the IBM Cloud Computing Services, Azure, AWS, Force.com, vmware, and others?
• Besides IBM, Azure, AWS, Force.com, and vmware, what other cloud services are really doing it right and pushing forward with redundancy, uptime, compute capabilities, and other key features?
• Anyone guessing on consolidations in the future with the current big players (AWS, Azure, Force.com)?