IBM and SAP have demonstrated new cloud technology at this
week's
CeBIT show in Hannover.
They have previewed workload portability across interconnected
cloud platforms, with the technology part of the European
Union-funded Reservoir Project
The system has seen the live migration of SAP applications
across remote IBM Power6 systems via cloud computing.
The technology is designed to provide companies with a range of
cloud computing systems to meet their specific business needs.
IBM and SAP showed how users can run enterprise applications in
the cloud, in particular demonstrating the migration of workloads
across physical servers and across datacentres.
"The breakthrough we are showing today is that applications can
flexibly move across remote physical servers, regardless of
location - which makes our work a strong enabling technology for
the cloud," said Joachim Schaper, vice-president of SAP Research
for EMEA.
"Specifically, in cloud-scale environments, service providers
will need to provide users with access to services across the
cloud. Service providers will need to compete on performance and
quality of service, and so the future cloud will need to support
application mobility across disparate datacentres to enhance
performance."
Yaron Wolfsthal, senior manager for system technologies at IBM's
research lab in Haifa, Israel, said, "With Reservoir, our aim is to
provide cloud technologies that will enable energy-efficient,
borderless delivery of IT services that are driven by actual
demands - with the goal of keeping costs competitive."
He said, "The new technology is allowing us to realise the
vision of true cloud computing by moving applications across
disparate interconnected networks to optimise load balancing across
remote servers.
"When changes in workload occur, the new technology
autonomically balances resource utilisation and power consumption
across remote servers. This is done, for example, by evacuating and
turning off under-utilised servers - and possibly entire
datacentres - when demand drops, and powering on idle servers when
load increases."
Reservoir - "Resources and Services Virtualisation without
Barriers" - is an IBM-led
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 17m euro EU-funded initiative explores the deployment and
management of IT services across different administrative domains,
IT platforms and geographies.
The project aims to develop technologies to support a
service-based online economy, where resources and services are
transparently provisioned and managed.