The European Cloud Computing Hub, opened in Dublin this week, is enterprise computing at its most advanced, writes Karlin Lillington

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, IBM this week opened its first European Cloud Computing Hub in Dublin, on an overcast day in a country famed for its rainy weather.

The centre, in an area of technology that is currently on the cutting edge of enterprise computing (see panel), is only the third that IBM has opened in the past few months and will serve clients in Ireland and Europe. The centre will also play a part in research and development work at IBM, and in educational initiatives at Dublin third-level institutions such as Dublin Institute of Technology.

IBM is just one of many high-profile technology companies looking at cloud computing. Others include HP, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo initiatives are focused on offering a cloud network to universities such as Carnegie Mellon, the University of Washington, MIT and Stanford, while IBM, HP, Microsoft and others are eyeing business applications.

Large cloud networks enable companies to distribute applications across a huge number of networked computers. That means banks can crunch through financial data at high speeds, but also that multiple users can collaborate and share information on a grand scale to develop software or use a service - or even brainstorm ideas together.

So-called Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 social networking applications, where many people can add content, join discussions or access and download services, are a major part of cloud computing because the strain of many people utilising a service at the same time, even shaping and altering it, can be managed by the large-scale computing power of a cloud.

The recent proliferation of cheap hardware and bandwidth, networked devices such as mobiles, PDAs and laptops, inexpensive memory and high-speed internet connections, is fuelling the cloud computing trend, say experts. In addition, a growing understanding and use of collaborative, multiple-user social networking services - everything from streaming media to mobile commerce and social applications such as discussion boards, blogs and chat - is opening doors for business use of applications that benefit from a cloud environment.

Cloud computing, says Dr Willy Chiu, IBM's vice president of High Performance On Demand Solutions, is about "how do you get more from what you have. I think the model fits very well in an enterprise data centre. You tap into it like a utility."

There are two models for cloud computing. Chiu says: outside the firewall, the equivalent of public access over the internet ("the most popular usage is actually pictures that people upload online"), and inside the firewall, the enterprise approach where access and security are tightly controlled and the cloud runs applications - often Enterprise 2.0 applications.

Enterprise computing systems traditionally have been isolated into silos with much duplication of hardware and software. The advantage of using an enterprise cloud is that it's very easy to get started, says Chiu. Compared to the weeks or months needed to set up a traditional network, "you can do it almost instantaneously", he says.

IBM's first commercial Cloud Computing Centre opened last November at a massive software park in Wuxi, a few hours outside of Shanghai in China. The park will eventually employ a staggering 800,000 software engineers at various companies, and the Chinese government wanted developers to be able to access a powerful shared network rather than have to build out separate data infrastructure for each company.

"With the cloud network, you can get software developers up and running in a matter of hours," says Chiu.

Most organisations won't run a cloud network alone but will take a "hybrid" approach, with sensitive data more tightly firewalled on to a traditional network, he says. "You can mix and match, depending on what you need."

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 spur the development of new business ideas.

The service takes people from concept through to completion of an idea and has already been used to develop software applications and for general idea brainstorming, says Chiu. Consultants Sogeti will be one of the first Dublin centre clients to try the service.

IBM said the centre will employ 21 people initially, nine of them researchers. The Dublin hub will contain the physical network of servers for Europe, which will be accessed by a number of satellite "virtual" facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Additional cloud hubs are planned globally.