IBM will unveil its cloud computing strategy today at a meeting in Shanghai, becoming the first technology company to offer a service that lets customers buy the equivalent of overdraft protection for data centers.
Jayashree Subrahmonia, director of IBM Cloud Labs, said that customers are finding that their own data centers, which for marketing reasons are increasingly called "private clouds," are running out of computing power as demand for applications surge, driven by mass adoption of Web 2.0 and mobile services.
IBM said it has developed new technology that lets IT managers transfer noncritical programs from their private data centers to public data centers run by IBM to free up computing power.
Big Blue is hoping to capture share in the growing cloud-computing market, which research firm IDC estimates can grow to $42 billion by 2012.
While many companies say they can deliver computing power on demand, most are using relatively old technology, analysts say. They aren't able to move software programs around the planet, dialing up a data center in Dublin, Ireland, when a server farm in San Jose reaches full capacity.
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