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DUBLIN, March 19, 2008 -- Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced the establishment of Europe’s first Cloud Computing Centre. Located in Dublin, the new facility will serve as a hub that will deliver Cloud Computing research and services to a number of satellite facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa. IBM experts from these Centres will work directly with clients in the region, helping them adopt cloud computing solutions that spur technology research and business development.

One of the Dublin Centre's first offerings for clients, called IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, is a new service delivered directly to clients over a cloud computing environment. Using Web 2.0 technology, it allows communities of business professional to be assembled into social networks to facilitate the development of new business ideas. IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing captures business processes -- from their beginnings as ideas to commercialisation -- speeding up brainstorming among employees, partners, software developers and other third party participants.

"The selection of Ireland as the location for IBM's European hub for Cloud Computing highlights Ireland's role as an important contributor to IBM's global research, development and innovation strategy,” said Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. “The investment further establishes IBM Ireland's growing reputation as a high performance computing centre within IBM Corporation. IDA Ireland and IBM have a proactive long-standing relationship in advancing the Irish business and the implementation of strategic high value knowledge based research and development investments."

"Our investments in cloud computing are a prime example of how IBM is seeking out emerging global market opportunities and new computing models that benefit IBM clients," said Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software Group. "Through this new facility and the cloud computing model, the wealth of talent at IBM's software lab in Ireland will be accessible to not only the rest of Europe, but Africa and the Middle East as well."

Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) infrastructure in which dynamically shared computing resources are virtualised and accessed as a service. Cloud computing replaces the traditional data Centre model in which companies own and manage their own, stand alone hardware and software systems. Cloud computing is an attractive proposition for small to large-sized companies. It also is a green technology model that reduces energy consumption by improving IT resource utilisation, therefore requiring fewer servers to handle equivalent workloads.

The need for cloud computing is fuelled by the dramatic growth in business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce.

"Responding to demand in the market, we are moving fast to build an integrated cloud computing operation. We are adding Europe's first Cloud Computing Centre at Dublin and more facilities into a network of existing Centres in China, Vietnam and the U.S. The Centres can bring skills and expertise to serve our clients in building their own new enterprise data Centres," said Dr. Willy Chiu, Vice President of High Performance On Demand Solutions, IBM Software Group. With such a network of Centres, Dr. Chiu pointed out, "We will also address the need for open interoperability standards."

IBM High Performance on Demand Solutions Lab will work with IDA Ireland to build this Centre using IBM’s “Blue Cloud” technologies, a series of cloud computing offerings based on industry open standards and open source software. IBM Tivoli systems management software will manage the Cloud Computing environment.

The Centre will place a focus on innovation and research activities. As part of its ongoing educational initiatives, IBM has also agreed to facilitate cloud computing training for lecturers at the Dublin Institute of Technology’s School of Computing. The training will help the school to foster new skills that meet the needs of this emerging computing model.

IBM Cloud Computing Milestones
IBM has been expanding its cloud computing capabilities around the world. Since a year ago, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam and others. IBM launched “Blue Cloud,” a series of cloud computing offerings. IBM also entered into partnership for cloud computing programs with a number of partners in Europe.

Click here for more information about IBM Cloud Computing (US)
Click here for more information about IDA Ireland

IBM Press Contact
Jim O’Keeffe
Media Relations, IBM Ireland
okeeffej@ie.ibm.com
+353 1 815 4124
+353 86 8542054