IBM teams up with Amazon Web Services

Big Blue announces plans to deliver its software in the cloud via Amazon's hosted Web services.

Dawn Kawamoto Former Staff writer, CNET News

Dawn Kawamoto covered enterprise security and financial news relating to technology for CNET News.

Dawn Kawamoto

Feb. 11, 2009 2:38 p.m. PT

IBM announced Wednesday plans to deliver its software via Amazon Web Services, in a move to push its software into the clouds.

IBM will use Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to offer its customers and third-party developers its software based on a pay-as-you-go system.

Under the arrangement, users will have access to IBM's DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Web Content Management, WebSphere sMash and Novell's SUSE Linux operating system software.

IBM is also providing free Amazon Machine Images for development and testing purposes, which is designed to allow developers to quickly build pre-production applications.

Big Blue expects to have its software available in an EC2 beta in the coming month and will later announce its pricing.