IBM is to establish the first cloud computing centre for software companies in China.

The facility will be situated at the Wuxi Tai Hu New Town Science and Education Industrial Park in Wuxi.

The launch forms part of an agreement between IBM and Wuxi Tai Lake Industry Investment and Development Company (WTLIIDC) to offer emerging Chinese software companies the ability to tap into a virtual computing environment to support development activities.

IBM will work with the WTLIIDC, as well as the Wuxi municipal government and its business partners, to build the shared facility providing each software company in the park with its own virtualised computing resource.

Companies will be able to use the allocated resource for designing, developing and testing software products, replacing the traditional data centre model in which each company owns and manages its own hardware and software.

The technologies include IBM Rational software development tools, WebSphere Application Server software and DB2 database software running on IBM System x, System p and BladeCenter servers.

IBM will use its Tivoli systems management software to manage the environment.

"Cloud computing is helping to foster the growth of new software companies in China," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBM Software Group.

"Like many new software companies seeking growth opportunities locally and abroad, these Chinese software companies will rely on technical infrastructures built on open standards and delivered as a service.

"This open approach to computing will help them deliver innovation and pursue global market opportunities."

"The China Cloud Computing Centre represents a milestone in service-oriented computing," said T W Liu, chairman and chief executive at iSoftStone, one of the new software companies in the park.

"It will allow companies in the Wuxi Software Park to leapfrog to the newest computing models and provide an efficient IT platform for software development. "

The centre will be built using IBM's 'Blue Cloud', a series of computing technologies based on open standards and open source software which link computers to deliver a range of computing services.