IBM Opens Africa’s First “Cloud Computing” Center

…… Second Cloud Center in China

“IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the opening of new “cloud computing” centers in South Africa and China. Cloud computing enables the delivery of personal and business services from remote, centralized servers (the “cloud”) that share computing resources and bandwidth — to any device, anywhere.
The shift to cloud computing is fueled by the dramatic growth in business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce. Cloud computing represents a major step up in computing — as it enables governments, businesses and individuals to access super-computing power, analysis of massive amounts of data, and applications five to 10-times more cost effectively.*
The new centers are designed to help clients in Africa and China tackle issues they would otherwise not be able to address. For example, using IBM’s new centers, a university could access the computational power of a supercomputer to analyze data and determine how diseases might spread in a region or how climate changes will affect natural resources. “