IBM opens cloud-computing center in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: IBM unveiled a cloud-computing center in Bengaluru. The center will give enterprise customers including mid-market, universities and government bodies in India immediate access to the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications.

The center in Bengaluru joins other new cloud computing centers in Korea, Vietnam and Brazil that have been announced recently. These centers will cater to an increasing demand in emerging markets such as India for Internet-based new computing models and skills.

IBM cloud computing centers host computing activities for clients or provide access to expertise and infrastructures for clients to design and deploy their own cloud environments.

This computing model allows businesses and consumers alike to remotely access a vast computing resource that can be tapped on-demand to deliver next-generation services that consumers demand, like online medical records or mobile stock portfolio management.

It also improves energy efficiency because of its principle as a shared infrastructure, and allows organizations to better track information, pay for what they use and access more computing, storage, services or applications on demand.

IBM is already collaborating with partners, government and academia in other emerging countries to facilitate innovation supported by a cloud infrastructure. In India, clients such as mid-market vendors, academic institutions, telecommunications companies and government bodies will be able to access the center for the resources they need to pilot cloud infrastructures and applications, and deliver new services to their customers.

Said Prof Sanjay G Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur, “Cloud computing enables server centric virtualization which helps IT ecosystem to achieve smaller footprint, efficient resource utilization and server consolidation. Enterprises are looking at alternate ways to support their dramatically increasing computing needs, one that will allow for massive scalability while providing an energy efficient and resilient infrastructure. Technology collaboration between IIT Kanpur and IBM India will drive new developments in computing to support academic advancement and economic development in India.”

Dr Ponani Gopalakrishnan, VP, India Software Lab, said, “In emerging markets like India, hundreds of millions of people are opening their first bank accounts, getting their first cell phones, using their first credit cards and accessing e-government services for the first time. The convergence of personally empowering technologies into the hands of the consumer is fundamentally changing consumer behavior and expectations. Cloud computing offers an answer for many of these needs and allows an organization to further reduce costs through improved utilization, reduced administration and infrastructure costs, and faster deployment cycles.”

One of the prime agendas for the center in India will be to help enterprises looking to transform their data center for service delivery as well as startup businesses or organizations that do not have—or cannot afford to build—an entirely new infrastructure.

There will be a special focus on the fast growing communications industry including content providers, Internet service providers and telecom companies. Clients in India will be able to leverage the cloud-computing infrastructure to run Proof of Concepts, get help to design their own cloud infrastructures and have access to experts who can help them deploy their own cloud infrastructures behind their firewalls.

Cloud computing also presents an intelligent deployment mechanism for governments to build services to help citizens and this center will closely work with the government agencies to develop frameworks to demonstrate use of cloud in e-governance projects.