By IANS,
Bangalore : Global IT major IBM Wednesday unveiled its cloud computing centre in India’s IT hub here to host computing activities for enterprises, provide access to expertise and infrastructures for clients to design and deploy applications.
Cloud computing is tapping into a vast network of computers that can be accessed from afar by a cell phone, laptop or mobile device for information or data.
The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet. It is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided as a service, allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet.
“When the network is tapped, the power of thousands of computers can come together to access information or data in seconds. Our cloud computing is based on open standards and open source software which is a family of ready-to-use platform with systems technology and services,” IBM India software lab vice-president Ponani Gopalakrishnan told reporters here at a preview of the innovative product.
As one of its kind in India and of IBM’s 13 such facilities worldwide, the centre will give enterprise clients, including mid-market, universities and government organisations access to resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructure and applications to deliver innovative services to their customers.
“This computing model allows businesses and consumers alike to remotely access a vast computing resource that can be tapped on-demand to deliver next-generation services that consumers demand such as online medical records or mobile stock portfolio management,” Gopalakrishnan said.
As a shared infrastructure, the cloud computing improves energy efficiency and allows organisations to better track information pay for what they use and access more computing, storage, services or applications on demand.
“We are already collaborating with partners, government and academia in other emerging countries to facilitate innovation supported by a cloud infrastructure. In India, clients such as mid-market vendors, academic institutions, telecos and government bodies will be able to access the centre to service their customers,” IBM India Ltd managing director Shanker Annaswamy said.
The IBM facility will also help enterprises looking to transform their data centre for service delivery and innovation and start-up businesses that do not have or cannot afford to build new infrastructure.
“Clients in India will be able to leverage the cloud computing infrastructure to run proof of concepts, get help to design their own cloud infrastructure and have access to experts who can help them deploy them behind firewalls,” Annaswamy said.
IBM has invested $100 million and dedicated about 200 researchers in cloud computing. It offers a slew of products and services to help clients offer the types of services end-users and consumers demand.
Built on IBM’s expertise, ‘Blue Cloud’ is a set of hardware, software and services to offer personal and business services from remote, centralised servers, the ‘cloud’ that shares computing resources and bandwidth to any device, anywhere.
IBM India has about 1,600 client engagements across verticals spanning high-end to small and medium businesses.
“The convergence of personally empowering technologies into consumer hands is changing consumer behaviour and expectations.
“Cloud computing offers an answer for many of these needs and allows an organisation to reduce costs through better utilisation, reduced administration and infrastructure costs and faster deployment cycles,” Gopalakrishnan added.