IBM today announced it is leading a joint research initiative with 15 European partners which include telecommunications companies, healthcare and media companies and standards bodies to develop an object-based standard “intelligent cloud” storage architecture.
IBM said the goal of collaboration is to improve the delivery of rich data and storage services across national borders and a variety of suppliers. The research project led by the research arm of IBM in Haifa, will address the main challenges facing modern storage clouds, including: profitability, data mobility through the cloud providers, and security assurances massive computing requirements of energy that affect the quality of service.
The initiative, called “Cloud VISION – virtualized storage services for the Internet of the Future” is being funded through a European Union grant worth $ 21.4 million.
IBM said that the data contained in the architecture of cloud is represented by intelligent objects, including a wealth of information that describes the content and how the object should be managed, replicated or backup.
VISION Cloud combines several concepts, including an object model rich data, performing calculations about the stored content, access to focused content and complete data interoperability.
“Now, users require capabilities that are much richer than single bits of storage oil and base,” said Hillel Kolodner, a researcher at IBM Haifa and the principal architect of VISION Cloud, in a statement. “To meet this need, the focus must change to data bits which are collections of semantically significant and associated metadata. With VISION Cloud, our goal is to develop the infrastructure to support the prominence of data-intensive services data. ”
And a storage system based on objects made today, the data will be searchable through a central database of metadata.
IBM said that with VISION Cloud, a future storage service provider may offer a “digital safe” services, where consumers can store photos, videos, medical records and financial records securely in the cloud.
“So, for example, when a pregnant woman undergoes a 3D ultrasound of her fetus, the image is automatically loaded and stored in digital safe. You can then decide to give access to family members and a video editing service online, through which is produce the first video of your baby, which she shares with friends and family, “said IBM.
Friends and family, then you could give permission to download the video and watch it on their personal device, each with its own screen size and video formats. Meanwhile, a radiologist can use the video, for example, finding a mild abnormality may scan labels accordingly. That labeling could trigger a search in a repository of doctors, which could find that the anomaly is probably an allergy medicine.
The partners of the initiative include IT technology, enterprise software and service providers such as SAP AG, Siemens Corporate Technology, Engineering and iTricity. telecommunications providers Telefnica include research and development, Orange and Telenor Laboratories. service providers include media RAI and Deutsche Welle. Also included in the coalition are the Storage Networking Industry Association Europe, standards organization, the National Technical University of Athens, the University of Umea, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and University of Messina.