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BM Launches Cloud Computing Center in India       Date Submitted: Thu Oct 02, 2008

BANGALORE: IBM has unveiled a cloud computing center in Bangalore. The center will give enterprise customers including mid-market, universities and government bodies in India immediate access to the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications, and deliver new and innovative services to their customers. The center in Bangalore joins other new Cloud Computing centers in Korea, Vietnam and Brazil. These centers will cater to an increasing demand in emerging markets such as India for Internet-based new computing models and skills.

IBM Cloud Computing Centers host computing activities for clients or provide access to expertise and infrastructures for clients to design and deploy their own cloud environments. 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, like online medical records or mobile stock portfolio management. It also improves energy efficiency because of its principle as a shared infrastructure, and allows organizations to better track information, pay for what they use and access more computing, storage, services or applications on demand.

IBM is 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, telecommunications companies and government bodies will be able to access the center for the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications, and deliver new services to their customers.

"Cloud computing  enables server centric virtualization which helps IT ecosystem to achieve smaller footprint, efficient resource utilization and server consolidation. Enterprises are looking at alternate ways to support their dramatically increasing computing needs, one that will allow for massive scalability while providing an energy efficient and resilient infrastructure. Technology collaboration between IIT Kanpur and IBM India will drive new developments in computing to support academic advancement and economic development in India," Said, Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Dr. Ponani Gopalakrishnan, Vice President, India Software Lab, said, "The convergence of personally empowering technologies into the hands of the consumer is fundamentally changing consumer behavior and expectations. Cloud computing offers an answer for many of these needs and allows an organization to further reduce costs through improved utilization, reduced administration and infrastructure costs, and faster deployment cycles."

One of the prime agendas for the center in India will be to help enterprises looking to transform their data center for service delivery and innovation, as well as startup businesses or organizations that do not have or cannot afford to build an entirely new infrastructure. There will be a special focus on the fast growing communications industry including content providers, internet service providers and telecom companies.