Google and IBM are "ramping up" their efforts to dominate cloud computing, it has been suggested.According to reports in InformationWeek, the firms' chief executive officers made a joint appearance at a recent IBM conference in Los Angeles during which they revealed that they intend to build a worldwide network of servers.
The news source states: "[The cloud] will tap everything from online soccer schedules to advanced engineering applications."
Commenting on the initiative, Google's Eric Schmidt said: "It's the story of our lifetime," adding that the alliance between the companies started a couple of years ago when Sam Palmisano of IBM contacted Google wanting to know its thoughts about so-called "distributed computing".
During the conference address, Mr Palmisano stated that both IBM and Google are "grounded in values" and share "a common technical alignment".
The IBM-Google cloud runs on Linux, a computer operating system and example of free software and open source development.
Google has already released a number of free, cloud-based services to consumers, but, according to InformationWeek, it has "barely tapped the lucrative commercial market".
Speaking of the search engine provider's alliance with IBM, Mr Schmidt stated: "The cloud has higher value in business, that's the secret to our collaboration."
Although the executives did not make any specific announcements regarding when the firms would begin rolling out production versions of their cloud computing services, they reportedly "left little doubt" that their efforts are accelerating.
