Spending a few days with IBM at the company’s Information on Demand conference comes with three guarantees: you’ll get a tightly run event (they’ve been doing this for a few years now after all); you’ll get plenty of news; and you’ll be hit with plenty of new Americanised terms such as the "templatizing" of business intelligence tools and the "operationalizing" of data analytics.
Well, as cheesy as these terms may be – they are used with such gung-ho gusto that you at least get to see that the company truly believes in the software technologies that it is currently developing in the data management space.
Supporting the furtherance of IBM’s investment into this market is the launch of the company’s new UK Cloud Computing lab at the Hursley IBM Innovation Centre in Hampshire.
The company says that a recent IBM developerWorks survey of 2,000 IT professionals from 87 countries, 91 percent of respondents said they anticipate cloud computing to overtake on-premise computing as the primary way organisations acquire IT by 2015. Industry analysts also are predicting significant growth for cloud computing services, estimating that this year’s US$68 billion market opportunity will reach nearly US$150 billion in four years.
Partners at the new Cloud Computing Lab in the Hursley IBM Innovation Center can access the latest in IBM cloud technologies to develop and test new cloud services and work with industry experts to build a go-to-market plan. IBM says that a typical project at the lab will help a partner explore a wide variety of cloud computing models and become cloud builders, application, technology and infrastructure providers — as well as cloud resellers and aggregators, depending on their individual business.
Partners can access the lab from any of IBM’s network of 38 Innovation Centres worldwide. As a result, partners at these centres can work virtually with the cloud experts at the Hursley IBM Innovation Centre to enable their technologies and gain the skills they need to build and deliver new cloud services.
"Our business partners are ready to cash-in on cloud computing, and they are looking to IBM for hands-on assistance to drive new business opportunities," said Jim Corgel, general manager, IBM ISV and developer relations. "The new Cloud Computing Lab will help our partners gain the skills they need to build next generation business applications and services for the cloud using IBM technologies."