IBM has backed several research establishments with its ‘Blue Cloud’ cloud computing solutions. Blue Cloud will see deployment at the Qatar Cloud Computing Center (QCCC) of the University of Qatar, home to educational outposts of both Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M. IBM expects that cloud computing will accelerate projects and research initiatives that were hitherto constrained by time or by limited system resources. The QCCC is to open its cloud infrastructure to local businesses and industries to test applications and complete projects such as seismic modeling.
Professor Majd Sakr of the Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar said, ‘We are working with IBM to create the first cloud computing platform in the Middle East and to realize the vision of a cloud computing infrastructure targeting regional applications and R&D projects.’ The QCCC will be used for research on data mining, scientific modeling and simulation and financial modeling and forecasting. Pilot applications include seismic modeling for oil and gas exploration, integrated production operations, an Arabic language web search engine and the testing and migration of various applications using Hadoop, an open source cloud computing infrastructure. Willy Chiu, VP IBM Cloud Labs added, ‘For decades, clients have turned to IBM to integrate new technologies and computing paradigms into their operations and now, Linux, open source and the Internet.’ IBM is also partnering with rSmart to deploy Sakai, an open source learning management system. IBM claims 100,000 users of its 13 worldwide cloud computing centers.
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