IBM opens European Cloud Computing centre in Dublin

IBM has opened a European cloud computing centre in Dublin to deliver research and serve the cloud computing needs of customers and partners.

Financially backed by the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland), the new facility will serve as a hub that will deliver cloud computing research and services to a number of satellite facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

IBM experts from these centres will work directly with clients in the region, helping them adopt cloud computing systems that spur technology research and business development, said IBM.

One of the Dublin centre's first offerings for clients, called IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, is a new service delivered directly to clients over a cloud computing environment.

Using Web 2.0 technology, it allows communities of business professionals to be assembled into social networks to facilitate the development of new business ideas.

IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing captures business processes - from their beginnings as ideas to commercialisation - speeding up brainstorming among employees, partners, software developers and other third party participants.

Cloud computing is an IT infrastructure in which dynamically shared computing resources are virtualised and accessed as a service over the web.