IBM is seeking to differentiate their offering from Amazon by providing a high-end premium service aimed at enterprise level rather than the self-service Amazon cloud.

IBM faces the obstacle of remote cloud uncertainty at enterprise level and reversing the appeal of hosting vital applications in-house, compared to the attractiveness of AWS to SMEs.

The new service will provide greater support, cloud management tools and sets itself apart from its competitors by offering software support. In a press release IBM said: “Many organisations eager for the economic advantages of cloud computing hesitate to run critical applications on the cloud.”

IBM has also moved to expand the clouds global availability, with the service now in countries including China, Australia and Brazil.