Yahoo, Intel, HP team up for new era computing research

BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhuanet) -- Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett Packard are teaming up for a joint research project, the Cloud Computing Testbed, the trio of tech titans said Tuesday in a joint announcement.

The global, multi-data-center, open-source testbed will be open to users to build new applications for the advancement of cloud computing research and education, according to the companies.

"Cloud computing represents a new era of computing. Working at that kind of scale means there will be many unanswered questions and raise new problems for computer science," said John Manley, director of HP's strategic research lab.

Cloud computing is an approach that already is starting to reshape IT and is leading to development of some of the world's largest data centers. Companies from Amazon to Google, IBM and Salesforce.com already offer some cloud computing (define) services, but Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of research at HP and director of HP Labs, said a larger effort is needed.

Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said that the approaches being taken by Google and Microsoft involve some specific applications. What Yahoo, HP and Intel want to do, he added, is to develop cloud-based systems that can handle a broader range of applications. The three companies and their partners will also look at the data center needs posed by such systems, including power and cooling requirements, management tools and hardware-latency issues.

HP, Intel and Yahoo hope that by banding together, they can foster increased collaboration among IT vendors, universities and government agencies on cloud computing, which they said is being hampered by "financial and logistical barriers."

But each of the three companies has a different reason for being interested in the technology. For HP, broader adoption of cloud computing might mean more IT services deals as well as more hardware sales. For Intel, it could mean increased demand for processors. And the research initiative could give Yahoo the ability "to start moving its infrastructure forward," Reynolds said.

The three companies said they also will be working with universities in the U.S. and Germany and with the Singapore government's IT development agency as part of the new Cloud Computing Testbed initiative.

Non-founding members will be invited to participate in the research initiative by year's end, and much of the intellectual property that comes out of the research work will be shared with other companies, according to Manley. "The intention is to be very open about the results," he said. "This is being set up as an open collaborative framework."
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