By Paul McDougallInformationWeek
Google already has launched numerous cloud-based services for consumers, such as e-mail and storage. With the exception of security requirements, "there's not that much difference between the enterprise cloud and the consumer cloud," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said earlier this month during an appearance in Los Angeles with IBM chief Sam Palmisano. "The cloud has higher value in business. That's the secret to our collaboration."
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
Palmisano and Schmidt insisted that their companies are similar, despite obvious differences. "We're boring, they're exciting. We're slow, they're fast. We're fat, they're skinny," Palmisano joked. But the contrasts are mostly skin deep, he said, noting that the companies share "a common technical alignment."
Under a portion of its cloud strategy it's calling the Blue Business Platform, IBM plans to launch an online marketplace offering its own pre-integrated products and services, as well as those from other software developers. Customers will be able to use the software they buy "on premises or in the cloud," Palmisano said.
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The IBM-Google alliance started a couple of years ago with a phone call from Palmisano to Schmidt. "Sam called and wanted to know what we thought about distributed computing," Schmidt said. "We weren't looking to sell them anything," Palmisano insisted. Last October, the companies gave their joint platform project to several top engineering universities, including Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford, to poke away at. Now, IBM and Google say it's ready for wider use.
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