IBM Opens New Lab to Focus on Social, Cloud Tech

IBM this week broke the seal on its largest software development laboratory in North America at a campus located on two sites in Littleton and Westford, Mass.

The lab will bring together more than 3,400 IBM employees charged with designing and developing new and more efficient software applications for enterprise customers.

“IBM views Massachusetts as an innovation hotbed,” Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive for IBM Software, said in a statement. “IBM is committed to nurturing the human talent and economic strengths of the growing Massachusetts tech hub. The IBM Mass Lab is a critical component of our growth strategy for the state of Massachusetts.”

Developing cloud-based applications and services will be the cornerstone of the new lab’s mission. Company officials said the new facility will primarily focus on new technologies centered on social networking, cloud computing and analytics.

Earlier this week, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced the acquisition of Coremetrics, a provider of on-demand Web and social media analytics applications.

Company officials said researchers at the new site will spend a considerable amount of time and money developing the next generation of mobile applications for consumer and business customers.

The new campus is one of 70 IBM software labs sprinkled around the world. IBM has partnered with more than 100 venture-capital backed technology companies in Massachusetts and has more than 1,600 business partners in New England.

The IBM Mass Lab can accommodate 59,000 square feet of server space and contains 31 miles of copper and fiber-optic wiring for data networking, virtualization and power monitoring.

Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.