So, I see that IBM Cloud Computing and Business Objects (part of SAP) have announced a bunch of jobs in Dublin in the IT research area.

This is a bit of great news in a week of grim news.  The reason this is so fantastic is that these jobs put real knowledge into the country.  Cloud computing is just about the most exciting new development in computing.  What it means is that you write some code to do whatever job you want to do - say you have a new social networking site - and if one person logs on to your social network, then you get allocated one processor or part of a processor.  If 100,000 people log on, then the ‘cloud’ bursts out onto thousands of computers.  Therefore, if you have a limited budget, you buy processing time on a cloud computing system and only pay for what you use.  You can therefore, have at your disposal a massive supercomputer or a small cluster, whichever is appropriate.  Also, it is a much cheaper option than setting up your own supercomputer facilities.

Brilliant stuff.  These jobs are really precious too and the fact that they are research-based means intellectual property for this country (though IBM/Business Objects will bebnefit most), but the expertise will be invaluable, they are not service industry jobs and  all round this is a good news item that potentially has long-term as well as short-term gains.

I love to see this happen.  More please.