IBM and the European Union have launched a joint
research initiative forCloud Computing.
IBM is leading a joint research initiative of 13 European
partners to develop technologies that help automate the fluctuating
demand for IT resources in a
cloud computing environment.
The £13m EU-funded initiative, called "Reservoir" - Resources
and Services Virtualisation without Barriers - will explore the
deployment and management of IT services across different
administrative domains, IT platforms and geographies.
The cloud computing project aims to develop technologies to
support a service-based online economy, where resources and
services are transparently provisioned and managed.
Cloud computing is an emerging approach to shared infrastructure
in which large pools of systems are linked together to provide IT
services.
IBM said the need for such environments is fuelled by dramatic
growth in connected devices, real-time data streams, and the
adoption of
service oriented architectures and
Web 2.0 applications, such as mashups, open collaboration,
social networking and mobile commerce.