NEW YORK — IBM aims to grab a piece of the more than $1 trillion in global stimulus spending by pitching cloud-computer projects for health care and energy.
The world’s biggest computer-services provider is talking to those customers about deals, said Erich Clementi, who leads the cloud business. Cloud computing lets clients store data on someone else’s computer servers so they don’t have to maintain their own.
The U.S. government’s stimulus plan will put more than $100 billion toward health care networks, energy grids and other technology projects, according to researcher IDC. IBM might benefit from that spending because cloud technology can help those operations run more efficiently, said Frank Gens, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC.
“Uncle Sam is coming down with funding,” Gens said. “Cloud computing’s coming at a very good time.”
Total cloud spending will top $40 billion by 2012, almost triple last year, according to the researcher.
The U.S. health care industry will receive about $21.1 billion in technology funding through the stimulus package, while energy will get $77.6 billion, according to IDC.
The U.S. government’s plan to improve health care records will just be “the tip of the iceberg” in spending for that industry, Clementi said in an interview. IBM declined to identify potential customers.
The company expects customers to adopt the cloud approach piecemeal — using it for certain tasks, such as business services or product development.
IBM introduced a cloud-computing service that analyzes business data last month. It plans to add features for helping workers manage workloads in coming months, Clementi said.
The company introduced so-called private clouds in June. They let customers put confidential information on external servers that lie within their own security systems. IBM also unveiled a device called CloudBurst, a computer that helps companies manage private clouds.
