August 5, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- IBM (ibm.com) has been a prominent name in the green hosting movement over the past few months, especially through its efforts with its Project Big Green initiative. And as much as IBM has been known to support a cloud computing research or educational initiative, lately it seems the technology giant has been working hard to establish itself as more of a leading player in the cloud computing movement as well.
On Friday, IBM announced it will unveil its ninth cloud computing center in Tokyo. The company says the center will give large enterprise customers, universities and governments immediate access to the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications and deliver new and innovative services to their customers.
IBM's Tokyo expansion announcement came the same day the company reported it would be building a $360 million data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina to deliver cloud computing capabilities to its clients.
In established markets like Japan, organizations have extensive, mature technology infrastructures that in many cases have become complex and inflexible over years of adding and subtracting pieces, says IBM. New applications of technology, such as mobile commerce, broadband over power lines, Web 2.0 applications and self-publishing, and real-time data streams, are stretching the capacity of these systems to their limits.
However, cloud computing gives organizations the opportunity to remotely access a vast network of computers that can be tapped on-demand to deliver the kinds of services that consumers will insist on, says the company.
"Cloud computing is fundamentally about re-engineering the world's computing infrastructure, to enable game-changing - even life changing - applications," says Willy Chiu, VP, IBM high performance on demand solutions. "To IBM, cloud computing is much more than the normal evolution of a data center."
IBM says it has dedicated more than 200 full-time researchers and over $100 million over three years in cloud computing. IBM launched its version of cloud computing "Blue Cloud" in November 2007 and describes it as "a collection of enabling technologies that is used to create cloud computing experiences for customers in data center, hosting service and other cloud environments."
Earlier this year in June, IBM launched two cloud computing centers in Johannesburg, South Africa and Beijing, China while it opened its first European cloud computing center in Dublin, Ireland in March.
