WebSphere Portal on Amazon

By Nick Hortovanyi

IBM have released a no charge development virtual server as an Amazon Machine Image, which includes WebSphere Portal and Lotus Web Content Management onto Amazon EC2.  A number of people pinged me about this. Thanks guys!

Reading the IBM press release - "IBM to Deliver Software via Clod Computing With Amazon Web Services", I can see that it is running on SuSe Linux. Now whats also very interesting is that these are "no charge" for development and test purposes. Its not just a trial for thirty or ninety days but free. You must pay for the Amazon EC2 usage charges.

Info is available on Developerworks on how to get started.

Whats very interesting is that IBM has allowed existing PVU (Processor Value Units) licenses to run on Amazon EC2 - details here for IBM PVUs required for Amazon EC2.

One of my greatest concerns previously with using WebSphere Portal in a SaaS environment was the PVU based pricing.  Now check this out from the press release -

"The IBM software images for full production running in Amazon EC2 will be launched in beta in the coming months, with pricing to be announced. All developers and customers will have the operational capability to run development and production instances of IBM software for an hourly price per instance."

Must update our Business Portal Server offering to leverage this both from a hosting perspective of the site itself, as well as an offering to clients. If you want to leverage this arrangement between IBM and Amazon we are raring to help you. We've got an ecosystem of experience professionals, not just IBM Certified WebSphere Portal guys that can deliver value quickly to you.

Just contact us in Aus or through the form on this page.