Search engine giant Google and International Business Machines (IBM) have announced they are to begin a programme on US college campuses to promote computer programming techniques for clusters of processors referred to as "clouds".In a telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt and IBM chief executive Samuel Palmisano confirmed the initiative.
Under the programme, the companies will spend between $20 million and $25 million each for the software, hardware and services that are targeted at computer science students and professors.
Cloud computing allows software that is traditionally installed on personal computers to be shifted or extended to be accessible via the internet, allowing organisations to share resources.
Google and IBM will initially provide 400 computers to the colleges involved and eventually plan to expand this figure to 4,000.
They will be available from six universities, including the University of Washington, which is where some of the programming techniques were developed, Stanford University, the University of California and Carnegie Mellon University.
Analyst with Forrester Research Mervyn Adrian commented: "This is the next generation of computer architecture and IBM wants to get in front of it."
According to Mr Palmisano, the idea to collaborate over cloud computing came last December when Google and IBM met at the search engine's Californian headquarters and the two firms realised they held similar views over the new technology.
