IBM, Academia Launch Autonomic Research Collaboration for Cloud Computing

ATLANTA, GA and ARMONK, NY and COLUMBUS, OH, Mar 26
(MARKET WIRE) --
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Atlanta today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced
that it will collaborate with two of America's leading academic institutions
on an initiative to develop new autonomic technology for cloud computing. The
effort is aimed at developing future technologies and training IT
professionals required to enhance the performance and energy usage of
computing applications while increasing productivity in the workplace.

Together with The Georgia Institute of Technology and The Ohio State
University, IBM is initiating this broad-scale, collaborative research project
focused on self-managing features for virtualized data centers in a cloud
computing environment. This new project includes the creation of a
prototype computing cloud that links data centers from the two institutions,
called the Critical Enterprise Cloud Computing Services (CECCS) facility.

Virtualized data centers give organizations the ability to do more with
fewer
resources by optimizing the use of software, computing hardware and storage,
and network infrastructure by sharing not only across departments but also
across
different physical locations. Cloud computing allows corporate data centers to
operate more like the Internet by enabling computing across a distributed,
globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than simply depending upon local
machines or remote server farms.

The success of cloud computing and a virtualized data center depends on
theability to continue the development of new management technology based
uponautonomic, or self-managing, capabilities that can reduce the complexity and
resources to manage the underlying distributed computing resources.

"Business environments and supporting technologies have evolved immeasurably
since IBM first introduced the Autonomic Computing challenge to the industry in
2001," said Alan Ganek, IBM vice president of Autonomic Computing and CTO of IBM
Tivoli Software. "Collaboration with our academic partners will pioneer new
areas
of research to further integrate autonomic capabilities in computer systems to
help
reduce the growing complexity of managing data centers in support of
businesses' goals."

The project focuses on software application services that are critical to
the ability of a business to function, such as operational information systems
run by
large airlines. It will look at how job and process activities and maintenance
schedules can be undertaken without seriously jeopardizing critical data center
operations. Similarly, the project intends to use self-managing software to
address a general problem of balancing technology system availability versus
performance.

The project will foster interaction and exchange of innovative ideas among
professors at Georgia Tech and Ohio State and IBM Watson and Austin Research
Labs and Raleigh development teams. Through the use of IBM Shared University
Research and IBM Academic Initiative programs, IBM is awarding the universities
with IBM BladeCenter H chassis running HS21 servers, IBM System Storage
DS3400, networking equipment and software that includes IBM Tivoli, WebSphere
and Information Management. Together with virtualization support, these will
form the
necessary foundation for building the CECCS facility.

The joint research will combine IBM's extensive technical, Autonomic
Computing and
cloud computing expertise, Ohio State's focus on IT processes and management
issues, and Georgia Tech's focus on creating new technologies and methods for
managing complex, dynamic and diverse distributed service-oriented systems and
applications.

"For future virtualized and service-oriented systems within a cloud
environment, we contend that without the coordinated use of hardware, operating
systems, middleware and applications, it will simply not be possible to meet
the demands of tomorrow's critical applications and systems that support
them," said Karsten Schwan, CERCS Director at The Georgia Institute of
Technology. "The CECCS facility will be a test-bed for modern management
tools, such as those provided by IBM Tivoli, and a visible artifact for
interactions with industry technology users and developers in these regions
and around the world."

"The CECCS program will not only be a new research facility, but it also
will
enable exciting, synergistic joint curriculum and research across these two
institutions," said Rajiv Ramnath, Director, CERCS for Enterprise Transformation
and
Innovation, The Ohio State University. "With this joint IT infrastructure
across our two institutions, we will have available to our practice,
research and education a prototype of the distributed infrastructures now used
in
business settings. We will use SOA methods to link different software silos
running at both sites, dynamically monitor and manage a highly distributed
virtualized infrastructure, and study and develop autonomic technology and
integrated tools to develop and manage reference implementations of flexible,
business-aligned enterprise architectures that will be used to research and
educate
on the issues of dynamics, diversity and complexity associated with this
increasingly common computing structure."

IBM Shared University Research awards are given annually by IBM worldwide
within
the IBM University Relations program to help stimulate the flow of
scientific knowledge to society in a range of research fields and topics. For
this collaborative research project, IBM will work closely with professors
Greg Eisenhauer, Ling Liu, Calton Pu and Karsten Schwan at Georgia Tech and
Rajiv Ramnath and Jay Ramanathan at Ohio State.

IBM Cloud Computing and Autonomic Computing

Over the past year, IBM has expanded its cloud computing capabilities around
the world
and 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 also launched "Blue Cloud," a series of cloud computing
offerings, and entered into partnerships for cloud computing programs with a
number of worldwide partners.

IBM first introduced the term "Autonomic Computing" in 2001 and issued a
Grand Challenge to the industry to build computer systems that regulate
themselves
much in the same way the autonomic nervous system regulates and protects the
human body. Autonomic Computing was unveiled as a solution to combat the
rising complexity of managing advanced computer systems. IBM has since
integrated autonomic capabilities in over 500 product features into more than
100 distinct products and services. With Autonomic Computing, the company has
focused on simplifying data center operations with virtualization,
provisioning, databases, maintenance, energy management, security and other
areas.

For more information about IBM Autonomic Computing, please visit
www.ibm.com/autonomic, and for IBM cloud computing,
www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/hipods.

More information on The Georgia Institute of Technology can be found at
www.gatech.edu and on CERCS at www.cercs.gatech.edu.

More information on The Ohio State University can be found at www.osu.edu
and on CETI
at www.ceti.cse.ohio-state.edu.

Press Contact:
Lon Levitan
IBM Media Relations
512-823-0404
llevitan@us.ibm.com

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