IBM is launching a cloud-based open source platform and putting its own tech at the core of it

IBM launched developerWorks Open this week, a platform being aimed at developers looking to develop open source solutions in collaboration with IBM using the company’s technology as a foundation.

The cloud-based platform will provide access to emerging IBM tech and expertise in the form of blogs, informational videos and other multimedia, and the opportunity to collaborate with specialists.

The company said it plans to contribute upwards of 50 projects to the initiative spanning various applications in cloud, analytics and mobile, and will also make the contributed services available on Bluemix.

“IBM firmly believes that open source is the foundation of innovative application development in the cloud,” said IBM vice president of cloud architecture and technology Angel Diaz. “With developerWorks Open, we are open sourcing additional IBM innovations that we feel have the potential to grow the community and ecosystem and eventually become established technologies.”

The company is also launching a set of open source projects specifically targeting applications and workflows in a number of industry verticals including healthcare, mobile, retail, insurance and banking. It said much of the open source development today, while promising, “lacks a strategic focus” on business requirements.

IBM has in recent years looked to bolster its open source strategy, in part by creating and owning its own communities. In 2013 for instance it launched the OpenPower Foundation, a group of technology companies innovating with and on top of its Power8 microarchitecture.

The company has also thrown its weight behind a number of large cloud-centric open source projects including OpenStack, Cloud Foundry (on which Bluemix is based), Docker and more recently, Apache Spark.