Projecting 28 percent annual growth in cloud computing, IBM this week opened its 10th laboratory focused on developing products and services for global Web 2.0, collaboration and mail services. The facility will support IBM’s LotusLive division, which it says has gained 18 million users in its first year and will be geared toward clouds for government and companies. The monthly cost for companies is $3 per user.
Cloud computing provides hosted services, such as e-mail, instant messaging, and calendar-scheduling to a limited number of people, such as employees of a corporation. Users have access to business applications, while software and data are stored on servers. The LotusLive suite includes Connections, Engage, Meetings, Events and Notes.
An increasing number of companies are exploring the cost savings of cloud computing, with some big corporations forming their own clouds and many others outsourcing, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
IBM estimates that the annual growth in cloud computing will bring it from a $48 billion industry in 2008 to one producing $126 billion in 2012. The research firm IDC projects that by 2012 cloud computing will represent nine percent of revenues in five key market segments, capturing 25 percent of the growth in information technology spending, and as much as a third of growth the following year.
IBM’s new facility in Hong Kong will use its existing China Development Laboratory, its largest software lab, with 5,000 developers.
“As the first cloud-computing laboratory in Hong Kong to serve as a global resource for cloud-based collaboration services, the laboratory marks a milestone for IBM and for the information-technology industry in Hong Kong,” said Dominic Tong, general manager of IBM China/Hong Kong Limited.
IBM is also boasting of the resources available from its acquisition last year of Outblaze Limited, also based in Hong Kong, whose work has been incorporated into…