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IBM to open Dublin cloud computing centre 
Wednesday, March 19 2008
by The Register


IBM is setting up Europe's first cloud computing centre in
Dublin, supported by IDA Ireland, at its Innovation Campus in
Mulhuddart.  



Up to 21 people are expected to be employed at the centre,
with nine of these employees focusing on research into cloud
computing. 

 

Cloud computing is a way that users can tap into increased
computing power, by creating networks from large groups of
servers and using specialised connections to carry out data
processing tasks. It essentially refers to an IT
infrastructure of shared computing resources, which are
virtualised and accessed as a service, perhaps through the
internet. Cloud computing eliminates the need to have
stand-alone hardware and local servers to deal with
applications and tasks.  

 

The technology model is also considered "green", reducing
energy consumption by improving the utilisation of IT
resources and requiring fewer servers to handle equivalent
workloads. The demand for the technology has grown as
business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data
streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and
entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce increase
in popularity.  

 

The Dublin-based centre will function as a European hub,
providing research and services to facilities planned for
construction in Europe, Middle East and Africa. It will also
help train lecturers at the Dublin Institute of Technology's
School of Computing in cloud computing training.  

 

The company's High Performance on Demand Solutions Lab will
use IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies -- which is a series
of cloud computing offerings based on industry open standards
and open source software -- to build the centre, in
partnership with IDA Ireland.  

 

"Responding to demand in the market, we are moving fast to
build an integrated cloud computing operation. We are adding
Europe's first Cloud Computing Centre at Dublin and more
facilities into a network of existing centres in China,
Vietnam and the US. The centres can bring skills and
expertise to serve our clients in building their own new
enterprise data centres," said Dr Willy Chiu, Vice President
of High Performance On Demand Solutions, IBM Software Group,
in a statement. 

 

The announcement was made by the Minister for Enterprise,
Trade and Employment Micheal Martin, who said the decision to
locate the centre in Ireland highlighted Ireland's role as an
important contributor to IBM's global research, development
and innovation strategy.    

 

One of the centre's first offerings is IBM Idea factory,
which uses Web 2.0 technology to facilitate the creation of
social networks from communities of business professionals.
This will allow them to collaborate and develop new business
ideas, encouraging brainstorming among employees, partners,
software developers and other third parties. 

 

IBM has certainly been upping the ante lately. Not only has
it announced the new cloud computing centre, but it also
signed a new licensing deal with Lenovo that enables the
Chinese PC maker to manufacture and sell a range of x86
servers, and bought up privately-held security software firm
Encentuate for an undisclosed sum. In January, it kicked off
the year with a three-year EUR45 million agreement with
Allied Irish Bank to transform its core banking systems.