IBM is launching its own versions of tailored cloud computing products and services for businesses, heralding the arrival of such services into the mainstream.

Cloud computing - where stores of data and processing power can be tapped over the internet - has been a buzz word in technology circles for a couple of years.

The ability to access applications, information and computing processes remotely from a wide variety of device is gaining popularity as a way of saving businesses money and reducing complexity in data centers.

All the major top-tier IT vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, VMware, Google and Amazon, have cloud computing technologies and products. Typically they offer services to companies including email, computer storage and management software.

Google is the leader in cloud-based computing for consumers. Its search services is a cloud computing service where its remote servers process the data and deliver back an answer to the consumer's screen.

But many big companies have been reluctant to take the plunge into cloud computing because of traditional concerns like the security of data, reliability of service and regulatory compliance.

Now IBM, with its size and track record with large corporations, is bidding to change that with a series of services that boast "the same kind of automation and simplicity that consumers expect from the web".

The company is looking to transform cloud computing into a secure, reliable model, in the same way Big Blue brought the internet to corporations in the 1990s, and personal computing to business in the 1980s.

IBM said it will offer under the IBM Smart Business cloud portfolio products and services for building private clouds behind a corporate firewall, public clouds, and hybrid clouds that span both corporate data centers and public services.

The offerings are aimed at helping client deal both with data centers that have reached the breaking of inefficiency and scale, but to prepare for floods of transactions and data coming from a billion connected people and a trillion connected devices expected in the next few years, a spokeswoman said.

"Every day approximately 10 petabytes of new information is generated - more than eight times the information stored in all the libraries in the US. While consumers generate 70 per cent of this info, enterprises are responsible for maintaining 85 per cent of it - including security, privacy, reliability and compliance," she said.

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