Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

IBM unveils 'cloud computing' initiative

Technologies for Internet-scale computing on the way in spring 2008
By Jon Brodkin , Network World , 11/15/2007

IBM is bundling several of its technologies to help corporate data centers run large-scale Web applications in a “cloud computing” model that's similar to the way major Internet players like Google operate.

IBM is dubbing its initiative "Blue Cloud" and says it will enable “computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than on local machines or remote server farms.”

Blue Cloud follows a Google-IBM collaboration announced last month that provides universities a curriculum and support for software development on large-scale, distributed computing systems. IBM and Google made three data centers available to those universities, although corporations that take advantage of Blue Cloud offerings will use their own Web servers

“If you’re going to run a large-scale Internet application, you’re going to need a large number of Web servers to handle requests that come in from mobile devices and laptops,” says Dennis Quan, IBM’s CTO for high-performance, on-demand solutions. “Cloud computing is designed to support both the Internet-facing Web tier that needs to scale out to millions of users, as well as the back-end data-processing tasks you sometimes associate with a grid.”

The first Blue Cloud offering will be available in spring 2008. IBM has not announced the price.

Blue Cloud offerings will run on IBM BladeCenters with Power and x86 processors, and facilitate the provisioning and allocation of resources as workloads fluctuate, IBM says. One Blue Cloud offering planned for 2008 will support the System z mainframe. Blue Cloud itself consists of Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux operating-system images and Hadoop parallel workload scheduling, all supported by IBM Tivoli server-management software.

The goal is to help customers manage tens of thousands of machines in the most efficient way, because many large data-center operators are running out of space and energy, Quan says.

The government of Vietnam is collaborating with IBM on a pilot cloud-computing program to make science and technology resources available to universities and research institutions “through the cloud infrastructure at IBM’s Almaden Research Center,” IBM said. Commercial uses of Blue Cloud will enable the heavy data requests that are part of targeted advertising, video, social-networking and other Web 2.0 technologies.

Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find out more

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost -- and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download the White Paper

Don't Fall For The Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Download the White Paper

Will You Add Tape Too?

Over two thirds of disk-only users look to add tape back into storage infrastructure according to recent survey.

Download Survey Information

Comment
Login
Forgot your account info?
Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed

Whitepapers

Sun Microsystems: The Green Tide Is Coming. Pressure Builds for an Energy-Efficient Data Center

It's safe to say that most companies, if presented with hard numbers on their energy consumption...

Consolidated Disaster Recovery Using Virtualization

Server virtualization is providing enterprises of all sizes with exciting new options for...

Secure Wireless Printing Options

Discover how you can reduce the TCO of your wireless printers in this whitepaper. Learn how to...

Webcasts

Direct from Microsoft: Tips for Integrating Exchange 2007 and Double-Take Software

Double-Take (r) Software and Microsoft are teaming up on September 9, 2008 for a webinar focusing...

Transforming the Enterprise WAN Edge: Video from Cisco

Life on the edge of your WAN has changed dramatically. With the need to deliver advanced services,...

PoE Plus: Impact on the PoE Market

The standard for Power over Ethernet (PoE), IEEE Std. 802.3af(tm)-2003, advanced networking,...

Special Reports

The New Network/System Management Challenges

Increasingly popular technologies such as virtualization, wireless networking and data center...

Virtualization Reality Check

Find out why analysts say approaching virtualization with an ounce of caution is wise. And also why...

Closing the Loop: Extending Wireless LAN Security to Wireless Printers

Enterprises cannot overlook wireless printers when assessing network security. The print jobs and...

Get instant email notification when white papers, webcasts, executive guides are added to our library. Stay informed and up-to-date with the latest on IT Technologies with Network World's Resource Alerts.