IBM said Monday that it's going full bore at cloud computing and launching a company-wide initiative to fill the cloud with new software and services. Amazon and Google have something of a first mover advantage with SMBs and ISVs; and IBM's vision is more a mix of tradition data centers and clouds.

According to IBM VP, high performance on demand solutions Willy Chiu, "We are moving our clients, the industry and even IBM itself to have a mixture of data and applications that live in the data center and in the cloud. IBM's cloud computing strategy was inspired by feedback from the business world's broadest IT customer base indicating a growing desire to utilize data, applications and services from any device and from any location based on open standards."

IBM ticked off a four-pronged strategy of how it would chase the clouds by delivering its own cloud services portfolio; helping ISVs design, build, deliver and market cloud services; helping clients integrate cloud services into their business; and providing cloud computing environments to businesses.

For starters, it's launching a free open beta of Bluehouse, the web-delivered social networking and collaboration cloud service that it's had in closed beta for months now.

People from different businesses are supposed to use to work together through firewalls and beyond organizational boundaries.

IBM has in mind partners, agencies, suppliers, customers and outside experts and says they can share documents and contacts, do joint projects, host online meetings and of course build social networking communities via the cloud and a web browser.

It reckons that SMEs will benefit from minimal upfront costs and maintenance of this Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, and departments in larger companies will have a quick, simple way to work with their key stakeholders within their intranet and out on the web. IBM says nothing of pricing.

The beta is at http://bluehouse.lotus.com.

The company is proposing Lotus Sametime Unyte for real-time web conferences and sharing documents, presentations and applications through any web connection. It says no on-site software server deployment or support is needed.

It has enhanced the stuff with multi-language support and faster network performance and a couple of new features like a "waiting room" for meeting participants to gather and specialized alerts and prompts for meeting hosts. At some point it's going to integrate Sametime Unyte with Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime so people working in e-mail or instant messaging can join web conferences, with a click of a button.

IBM said its Rational Policy Tester OnDemand, available as an annual subscription, would automate web content scanning to detect compliance issues. It's going to use Rational AppScan OnDemand to scan web applications for security bugs and is pushing its Arsenal Digital acquisition for both onsite and remote data protection.

On the ISV side it's creating a SaaS Enablement Network of infrastructure providers that use IBM hardware to help ISVs deliver SaaS solutions. Members so far include Terremark, Rackforce and iTricity, which recently opened a new Cloud Computing Hosting Center for Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg using IBM's cloud infrastructure.

IBM Business Partners can use the IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte for free and it's making a bunch of white papers, online demos and downloadable code available to ISVs to help them cope with the challenges of designing and building cloud-enabled services, including some reconstituted technical blueprints on IBM's developerWorks web site.

Cloud Computing on Wall Street Conference & Expo Announced
SYS-CON Events also announced today that the Cloud Computing on Wall Street Conference & Expo as wella s Cloud Computing Bootcamp East will take place on March 22-24, 2009, in New York City. The event is expected to attract over 1,000 decision makers, developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe who will be converging in New York City to attend this comprehensive meeting on Cloud Computing on Wall Street.

The future model for providing IT infrastructure and services in large organizations is what many today are calling "Cloud Computing" - a concept popularized by Amazon through its web services efforts. Financial analysts for example reckon that by 2011 the volume of Cloud Computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.

Any chief information officer concerned with computer system reliability and application availability in the competitive financial markets is thinking one of two things: either make failure impossible, or make recovery very fast. Thanks to virtualization, the trend is shifting toward fast recovery. Wall Street has a vested interest in eradicating downtime and achieving near-perfect uptime - a.k.a. "high-availability" (HA).

The Cloud Computing on Wall Street Conference & Expo is the leading event covering the booming market of Cloud Computing for the financial markets, with experts on financial, high-performance computing, service management, web-scale computing, and cloud standards. The conference will contain multiple sessions on how to improve application efficiency and lower costs by leveraging network and computing resources. Cloud Computing will help you take your applications and platforms to the next level.

Forrester Research analyst James Staten calls cloud computing "classic disruptive innovation where the mainstream dismisses the product and small companies have time to create a real differentiated value." But there are so many offerings just now that what infrastructure architects are looking for above all is a set of organizing principles they can use to guide them in choosing between them all.

Cloud Computing has many interpreters just now - and many interpretations. One thing is certain: it is the most dynamic new metaphor to hit enterprise computing since the creation of the "Web" by Tim Berners-Lee.

Accordingly SYS-CON Media & Events is continuing its market-leading practice of launching full-blown conferences ahead of anyone else by launching its Cloud Computing Expo, to be held March 22-24, 2009 in New York City.

Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities
Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities Offered on a First-Come First-Served Basis. To inquire about sponsorship and exhibit opportunities please contact Carmen Gonzalez at 201-802-3021 or by email at events(at)sys-con.com. Currently, a limited number of sponsorship and exhibition packages with multiple sponsorship discounts are available.

• IBM Launches Its Cloud-Enabled Services Portfolio
• Don Quixote, Larry Ellison, Richard Stallman, Raul Castro vs "Cloud Computing"
• CA's Swainson Gets Cloud Computing as Much as Larry Ellison Does