IBM and Pivotal have signed on to advance the Cloud Foundry platform.

The companies said that they would join the effort to build an open-source cloud platform which can be adopted by customers for public and private cloud computing platforms.

IBM said that the effort would allow customers to produce cloud computing deployments without the risk of vendor lock-in, keeping options open.

“Cloud Foundry’s potential to transform business is vast, and steps like the one taken today help open the ecosystem up for greater client innovation,” said IBM next generation platforms general manager Daniel Sabbah.

“IBM will incorporate Cloud Foundry into its open cloud architecture, and put its full support behind Cloud Foundry as an open and collaborative platform for cloud application development, as it has done historically for key technologies such as Linux and OpenStack.”

Launched int 2011 by VMware, Cloud Foundry seeks to provide businesses with a common platform for both public and private cloud networks.

For its part, IBM said that it would be providing its WebSphere platform to Cloud Foundry, including a preview version of the Application Server Liberty Core.

“We believe that the Cloud Foundry platform has the potential to become an extraordinary asset that many players can leverage in an open way to enable a new generation of applications for the cloud,” said Pivotal chief executive Paul Maritz.

“IBM’s considerable investment in Cloud Foundry is already producing great results with application-centric cloud offerings such as making IBM WebSphere Liberty available on Cloud Foundry. We look forward to growing and expanding an open Cloud Foundry community together with IBM.”