Big Data Research Expands with IBM Partnership in U.K.

The United Kingdom’s Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson has announced a £313 million partnership with IBM to boost big data research in the U.K.

Following on from the government’s £113 million commitment in the Autumn Statement to expand the Hartree Centre at Daresbury over the next 5 years, IBM will further support the project with a package of technology and onsite expertise worth up to £200 million. 

"We're at the dawn of a new era of cognitive computing, during which advanced data-centric computing models and open innovation approaches will allow technology to greatly augment decision-making capabilities for business and government," said David Stokes, Chief Executive for IBM in the U.K. and Ireland. "The expansion of our collaboration with STFC builds upon Hartree's successful engagement with industry and its record in commercializing technological developments, and provides a world-class environment using Watson and OpenPOWER technologies to extend the boundaries of big data and cognitive computing."

The Hartree Centre will directly benefit from breakthrough innovations rapidly emerging from the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community backed by IBM, NVIDIA, Mellanox and well over 100 other organizations worldwide. The research program will leverage OpenPOWER high performance computing innovations to enable complex analytics on massive amounts of data.
For more information, go here.