IBM联手网络安全“独角兽” 挑战亚马逊

IBM将联手十亿美元估值的旧金山科技初创公司Cloudflare，为云计算客户提供一套新的网络安全产品。

IBM的高管显然希望，通过这次合作能让IBM云成为亚马逊云服务Amazon Web Services（AWS）更有力的竞争者，而AWS是当今云计算领域的领头羊。达成合作后，IBM可以将多种信息技术安全的功能外包给Cloud flare，同时授权Cloudflare通过签订分销商协议接触IBM的客户群。

IBM负责云基础设施的总经理约翰·康斯戴恩向《财富》杂志表示，产品搭售将“极大简化终端用户的工作。”他说，产品一体化之后，IBM的客户增添Cloudflare的网络安全产品很容易，包括防御分布式拒绝服务（DDoS）攻击的工具和过滤互联网恶意流量的防火墙。

Cloudflare联合创始人兼首席执行官马修·普林斯表示，今后IBM的客户使用IBM云互联网服务时，就可以用Cloudflare，“多数时候点击一下仪表盘式界面的按钮”即可。相关功能定于今年3月19日上线。

这已是近年来Cloudflare与大型云供应商签订的第三份第三方经销商协议。此前该公司已跟谷歌云计算服务Google Cloud和微软云计算平台Azure达成类似合作关系（请注意，Cloudflare没有和亚马逊合作）。

解释联手IBM的理由时，Cloudflare的首席营收官克里斯·梅里特说，“想在市场上推一款产品，最简单的方法就是让客户通过现有的业务关系购买，就像客户长期与IBM买产品一样。”

IBM is teaming up with Cloudflare, a billion-dollar tech startup headquartered in San Francisco, to provide a new set of cybersecurity offerings to its cloud computing customers.

Big Blue’s executives no doubt hope the partnership will make IBM Cloud a more compelling alternative to Amazon Web Services, the present-day cloud computing king. The deal will enable IBM to outsource various IT security functions while granting Cloudflare access to IBM’s network of customers through a reseller agreement.

John Considine, IBM’s general manager for cloud infrastructure, tells Fortune that the product bundling will “hugely simplify things for end users.” The integration, he says, will let IBM customers easily add Cloudflare’s defenses, including shields against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and firewalls for filtering out malicious Internet traffic.

IBM customers will be able to use Cloudflare’s services, branded under IBM Cloud Internet Services, by “most of the time just clicking a button in the dashboard,” says Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and CEO. Access to the features is set to open on March 19.

For Cloudflare, the deal represents the third reseller agreement it has inked with big cloud providers in recent years. The company already has similar relationships in place with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. (Note Amazon’s absence.)

“The easiest way to bring a product to market,” says Chris Merritt, Cloudflare’s chief revenue officer, describing the reasoning behind the deal, is to have customers “buy through existing relationships, as they’ve had with IBM for long time.”

据今年2月内华达州里诺市市场研究公司Synergy Research Group发布的报告，目前IBM是第三大云供应商，2017年底市场份额约为8％。 亚马逊仍然占据云计算市场头把交椅，市场份额约三分之一，微软市场份额约占13％。

IBM-Cloudflare此次合作之前不久，IBM刚刚宣布很久以来首次实现收入增长，扭转了过去22个季度的持续下滑趋势。此次交易宣布之际，恰逢业界出现大量DDoS攻击，攻击目标都是存在大量虚假互联网流量的业务，攻击对象是web服务器。

普林斯表示，防止业务受此类攻击是Cloudflare提供的“基本功能”。上个月DDoS强力攻击法出现后，Cloudflare也是首批呼吁关注的公司之一。

他说：“（正因能洞察先机）所以我们才能帮企业做好防御。”（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审稿：夏林

IBM was the third biggest cloud provider with about 8% market share at the end of 2017, according to February report by Synergy Research Group, a Reno, Nevada-based market research firm. Amazon claimed the top spot with roughly one-third of the cloud computing market, while Microsoft held about 13%.

The IBM-Cloudflare alliance comes shortly after IBM posted its first revenue growth in long while, reversing a downward trend that afflicted the company for 22 quarters. The deal also comes in the wake of a spate of record-shattering DDoS attacks that targeted businesses with massive floods of bogus Internet traffic aimed at web servers.

Prince says that defending businesses against those types of attacks is an “anchor feature” for Cloudflare, which was one of the first companies to call attention to the new, force-amplifying DDoS attack method last month.

“That’s something that is right in our wheelhouse of being able to stop,” he says.