IBM said it plans to release new products next year that will allow organizations to make wider and more efficient use of the computing resources in their datacenters.
The idea is to make the resources available in a virtual "computing cloud" so they can be accessed wherever they are needed. That could mean on a distant server running an e-commerce application during a busy shopping season, or on a desktop in a laboratory that's trying to run a compute-intensive science application.
The challenge with such computing has been the complexity in managing such a widely distributed architecture. IBM announced Thursday it will offer new products, based partly on existing open-source software, to simplify tasks like ensuring security, data privacy and reliability, and getting high rates of system utilization.
IBM is calling the initiative Blue Cloud, and compared its significance to its decision several years ago to throw its weight behind Linux, which helped the open-source OS become more widely accepted by corporations. The new effort stems from technologies developed at IBM's Almaden Research Center, and IBM said 200 of its researchers have been working on the project.
source: infoworld
