Taking its cloud computing push to the next level, IBM is offering consulting services to help businesses take advantage of this new computing model, as well as enhanced security to protect corporate data.
At the same time, the company has established a program in which it will validate as trustworthy other providers of applications or services in the cloud environment — a “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval for the cloud set.
The computing giant has been talking up “cloud computing” for some time. Last spring, IBM partnered with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Ohio State University to create the Critical Enterprise Cloud Computing Services facility, a prototype of linked data centers at the two institutions.
In cloud computing, or network-delivered services and software, the storage and delivery of applications and related services are moved from a one-application-per-server model to virtualized servers, or “ the cloud,” typically a service provider’s data center. The concept is used to drive many popular Web services, including the software-as-service (SaaS) applications commonly delivered via the Internet. The concept involves maximizing server capacity and is one answer to the ever-growing complexity and expense of running on-site data centers.