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

According to the companies, 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.

John Manley, director of HP’s strategic research lab said “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.”

“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,” Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said. “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,”he said.

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.”
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.”

This news is from China electronics manufacturer.