IBM on Tuesday announced that its private test and development cloud was the top choice of developers in Evans Data Corporation's Cloud Development Survey 2010.

Evans Data Corporation's Cloud Development Survey Report examines the concerns, intentions and current adoption of developers regarding deploying to and developing for public or private clouds. The report covers the full range of Cloud Computing issues, including: Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud, Private cloud management and data centers, standards and security.

In the survey of over 400 software developers, almost 30% identified IBM as the top Private Cloud provider. Developers indicated that the most important factors in determining which private cloud provider to use are security, reliability and uptime, and proven expertise. The primary benefits of deploying applications in a private cloud are the freedom from maintaining hardware, cost savings, and scalability.

"We've seen that safely enabling developers to serve themselves can help reduce IT labor costs by 50 percent, reduce provision cycle times from weeks to minutes and improve quality, eliminating software defects by up to 30 percent," said Jan Jackman, vice president, cloud computing services, IBM Global Technology Services. "IBM is honored that our test and development cloud service has been recognized for its enterprise-grade security, reliability and control."

IBM's Smart Business Development & Test Cloud features IBM Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing, which includes a collection of Rational's market-leading products and capabilities helping clients harness the agility and flexibility of the cloud. Development and delivery teams can more effectively collaborate and quickly develop, test, and deploy new technology-based business initiatives. IBM also offers enterprise developers the opportunity to take advantage of IBM's secure and scalable cloud infrastructure with the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud.

IBM is building an ecosystem of partners to deliver the most complete and comprehensive cloud computing solutions to clients. This ecosystem comprises existing and new cloud partners in the IT industry that intend to work with IBM and complement the IBM Cloud in key areas. For example, RightScale and Kaavo can help customers manage and provision cloud resources to facilitate more effective deployment of applications and workloads in the cloud, while Navajo Systems can provide additional security for cloud-based applications and Silanis' e-signature process management can enable secure e-transactions and e-contracts. Aviarc, Wavemaker and Corent can enable development of applications on the cloud, while VMLogix can provide manual, functional, and compatibility testing; AppFirst can provide performance monitoring; or SOASTA CloudTest can deliver load and performance testing -- all taking advantage of the IBM Cloud.