Google and IBM team up in the cloud

In a joint public statement  the search giant and big iron giant announced they are teaming up to offer a broad range of hosted apps and services. The partnership should extend Google’s reach into the enterpriser market and IBM’s reach into the small/ medium business / consumer markets.

Over the next year, IBM and Google plan to roll out a worldwide network of servers from which consumers and businesses will tap everything from online soccer schedules to advanced engineering applications. The IBM-Google cloud, fresh off testing at several major universities, runs on Linux-based machines using Xen virtualization and Apache Hadoop, an open source implementation of the Google File System.

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.” (Yahoo News)