“Cloud computing” seems to be that new phrase you suddenly start hearing everywhere. First, we heard Ray Ozzie talk about it as part of Microsoft’s new business model in the Mix08 keynote address. Now we’re hearing about the new cloud computing center IBM will be opening in Ireland (via Silicon Republic and IBM).

To be honest, at first I was kind of confused as to exactly what cloud computing was all about, but luckily HowStuffWorks shed some light on that (as an aside, the power requirements of the main Google facility are pretty awesome in the Biblical sense). It groks to me that some pretty cool things could happen on the user end when it is no longer necessary to have the storage and processor requirements you need at the moment, but also that some pretty significant vulnerabilities arise when you glom so much data and processing power together in one place.

Some nuts and bolts data about the IBM center in Ireland:

• It will employ 21 people, 9 of them in a research capacity;
• IBM says that Sogeti Group will be their first clients for the cloud computing center.
• The first service they’ll be offering is IBM Idea Factory (supports business collaboration/ social networking).