IBM fluffs up cloud with analytics data

 

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By Stuart Turton and Reuters

Posted on 16 Nov 2009 at 08:49

IBM has launched a massive cloud-computing service dubbed Blue Insight, as it looks to take on companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

The "Smart Analytics Cloud" is IBM's biggest cloud-computing service yet and will be adopted internally.

According to the company, the service will hold a petabyte of analytics data gathered from 100 different data stores and warehouses. This information will be made available to 200,000 staff globally, and over time the company claims it will bolster the service with real-time data, including inventory levels and defects.

Cloud computing allows companies to run software and store information in remote, large-scale data centers that can be accessed over the internet. That means users can cut back on hardware, as well as space and electricity.

IBM, the world's biggest technology services company, has lagged behind younger companies in rolling out cloud services. But it is still early days for the cloud industry, which Gartner Research estimates will ring up sales of about $3.4 billion this year.

Business interest in cloud computing has picked up since Amazon started offering storage and computing services over the web about three years ago. Google and Salesforce are the other early leaders.