IBM Corp. has signed an agreement with Panasonic which is the largest cloud computing deal ever announced and involves 380,000 users of the company worldwide.

Cloud computing is a new way of running business applications where these are hosted out "in the cloud" rather than run on internally managed hardware and networks.

The deal which involves migrating 380,000 from Microsoft Exchange to IBM's LotusLive cloud computing offering, will allow Panasonic to host all its e-mails, calendars and contact management, web conferencing, file sharing and instant messaging online as a SAAS (Software as a Service) solution.

"LotusLive is an integral vehicle for our employees to truly function as a globally integrated enterprise" said Mitsuhiro Aoyama, the vice president for information systems at Panasonic.

Instead of licensing, installing, configuring and running their own applications, Panasonic are outsourcing these processes to IBM who run the applications from their data centres.

According to John de Giorgio, managing director of Shireburn Software, an advanced local IBM business partner, "Cloud computing is a major focus for companies as they strive to make more effective use of their IT budgets and is expected to grow at a rate of 28 percent annually".

In its first year of operations LotusLive has attracted 18 million users worldwide. One of its clients, the US Department of Interior, says it has seen a 40-60 per cent improvement in productivity from the cloud model.

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