IBM makes Big Blue cloud

November 16, 2009 A sign marks the entrance to IBM Corporate Headquarters

A sign marks the entrance to IBM Corporate Headquarters, in March 2009, in Armonk, New York. IBM on Monday announced it has created the world's largest business computing "cloud" capable of holding an amount of digital data on a par with 250 billion iTunes songs.

IBM on Monday announced it has created the world's largest business computing "cloud" capable of holding an amount of digital data on a par with 250 billion iTunes songs.

The US technology titan's Internet-based in-house system is called Blue Insight and is designed to enable IBM's 200,000 employees to swiftly find answers or patterns in mountains of information.

"I expect this first-of-its-kind approach will help drive both new growth opportunities as well as have a significant impact in cost savings," said IBM chief information officer Pat Toole.

"This new model of cloud computing will provide our employees with a single place to access real business insights, improve standards compliance, and create a repository of best practices throughout our company."

Blue Insight will gather and analyze more than a petabyte of information from nearly 100 different information warehouses and data storage areas.

A petabyte is equal to a million gigabytes. If that amount of information were in the form of text stuffed into four-drawer file cabinets, there would be enough of them to ring the planet, according to IBM.

IBM also unveiled an offering for businesses that want computing clouds of their own.

Blue Insight served as a template for the Smart Analytics Cloud systems, according to IBM.

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SincerelyTwo - Nov 16, 2009
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Using 'songs' is such a bad measure for storage capacity, is this article being targeted to iTunes users or something?

If your readers are on a science* website and care at all to read about cloud systems... they're going to know what a terabyte is, even a petabyte.

Physorg; you're just insulting us now.
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rincewind - Nov 16, 2009
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It's not a digital audio file, it's an Apple iTunes song! TM(C), all rights reserved.
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Bob_B - Nov 16, 2009
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Some folks just need to keep using the Apple names...they paid so much for their MP3 players! Apple is such a rip-off. The prices they charge are laughable, but, some folks think spending lots of money on Nike shoes is a good thing...go figure!?!
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axemaster - Nov 16, 2009
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"250 billion iTunes songs"

That means literally nothing to me... How much in some actual measurement system? Say something meaningful. For the love of GOD!!!
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x646d63 - Nov 16, 2009
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Storage capacity: 250 billion iTunes songs
Computing capacity: 800M Chimp-Mensa Candidates
Physical size of network: 300,000 slightly above average elephant toes
Electric consumption: 3.6M 60Hz gerbil wheels
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magpies - Nov 16, 2009
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Are they talking 9 min long itune songs or 1, 3, or 5?
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keijo - Nov 17, 2009
- Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Physical size of network: 300,000 slightly above average elephant toes

Is that african or asian elephant toes?
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CreepyD - Nov 17, 2009
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Exactly, song sizes vary hugely, as do movie sizes, picture sizes etc. I too find it annoying when these comparisons are used.
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init15 - Nov 22, 2009
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Lol...I think they're referring to 3.5 minute songs at 320kbs, but I'm not positive.
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