Industry News Desk
IBM To Offer Cloud Cover
IBM Is Going to Peel Off Another $300 Million and Sink the Money Into Building 13 Clouds Scattered in 10 Countries
Aug. 23, 2008 02:00 PM
IBM’s going to peel off another $300 million and sink the money into building 13 clouds scattered in 10 countries around the world where business and government can tuck their data and applications against disaster and destruction.
IBM calls the infrastructure expansion “massive” and says it’s the “largest of its kind and will permit IBM clients to access services that support business continuity for the first time from a cloud computing environment.” It also says it’s in answer to “surging demand.”
The so-called Business Resilience Service Delivery Centers will go into Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Warsaw, Milan, Cologne, Rio de Janeiro and Brussels as well as Metro Park, New Jersey, Izmir, Turkey, Mumbai, India and some unspecified place in South Africa.
IBM says it’s accelerating the build-out of its Information Protection Services business to deliver cloud-based computing services in support of business continuity.
It involves IBM hardware with storage management software in a configurable rack-mounted storage appliance called a data protection vault that’s capable of holding multi-terabytes of information. IBM said the vaults are integrated with technology it got from its acquisition of Arsenal Digital Solutions earlier this year. The patent-pending widgetry is supposed to enable global scalability and recovery.
Data sent to IBM will be encrypted and can be recovered in a few hours.
IBM means to replace the clients’ more expensive data mirroring.
IBM is already spending $360 million just on one cloud center in North Carolina.
About Maureen O'GaraMaureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara