There has been no summer slowdown at IBM where July brought a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made during the month is below.
The company announced record second-quarter results with profits up 28 percent on $27 billion in revenue — roughly $300 million per day! The stellar results came across the board from rom many product, service, software, and geographic areas. The company seems to be firing on all cylinders. SustainableBusiness.com placed IBM on their  list of the top twenty sustainable stocks.
Cloud computing will become more and more pervasive in the news over the next few years. So far it has been mostly consumer facing activity such as what Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple, and others are doing, but behind the scenes IBM is investing heavily. The clouds that IBM operates are more enterprise, education, and research oriented. The company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create two ultra-sophisticated data centers that will power the cloud computing model that in turn will enable large institutions to offer their clouds to their customers. Another way to say it is that IBM is creating a cloud of clouds. IBM is also providing advanced new server hardware to enable others to build clouds. Microsoft is among the first to implement IBM’s iDataPlex system, a new category of server that brings supercomputing power to cloud environments. IBM is also going green — the latest Supercomputing Green 500 List shows that 39 of the top 40 systems ranked on supercomputing energy efficiency are IBM-based. The company is designing technologies to cut energy use in half by 2010, while increasing computing capacity by a factor of 10.
On the people front, IBM’s new Corporate Service Corps program is getting some well deserved headlines. A software-development manager from IBM’s Raleigh, North Caroline office spent July in Timisoara, Romania, where he helped a furniture manufacturer become more efficient and more computer-savvy — offering his expertise for free. With Mr. Chakra in Timisoara were eight IBM colleagues from five countries. Each was assigned to help a different company or non-profit organization, sharing their experience and cultural backgrounds with the local staffs and one another. It is analogous to the Peace Corps. In the short term there is a lot of skills transfer but in the long term IBM gains a foothold in emerging markets and the assignees gain a tremendous breadth of experience which prepares them for key roles as the company continues to grow as a global leader.

• Complete Index of IBM Happenings (by year and month)