HP, Intel, Yahoo to Build Cloud Test Environment

Chipmaker Intel, Web firm Yahoo, and hardware manufacturer Hewlett Packard will build a network of six data centers for research into cloud computing.Called the HP, Intel and Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed (CCT), the network "will provide a globally-distributed, Internet-scale testing environment to encourage research on the software, data center management, and hardware associated with cloud computing," according to Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of Research at HP and director of HP Labs. The test bed will enable researchers to test the reliability and security of cloud computing.

"Cloud computing represents a new era of computing," said John Manley, director of HP's strategic research lab. "Working at that kind of scale means there will be many unanswered questions....We want to create an environment that can begin to answer some of these challenges."

Intel, Yahoo, and HP will each host one of the data centers, with the other three at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the University of Illinois, and the Steinbuch Centre for Computing in Germany.BBC News, The Register