The Hong Kong government and private sectors have been called on to back a revolutionary plan to share and access all computing resources in the SAR as easily as electricity from a wall socket.
Senior executives at IBM China/Hong Kong, led by general manager Cordelia Chung, urged the adoption of grid computing techniques to establish a 'community computing model', which would help reduce future information-technology (IT) investments and result in greater efficiencies from a rational distribution of computing power in Hong Kong.
The company yesterday unveiled an action programme for Hong Kong to put all its computing power, applications and services 'on tap', just like water and electricity utilities.
'This technology roadmap puts forward our recommendations to rebuild Hong Kong into a knowledge-based economy even as questions have been raised about the SAR's ability to stimulate economic recovery,' Ms Chung said.
She said there was great urgency for Hong Kong to lead Greater China in creating a grid computing system to foster 'a society of experts, selling its skills and knowledge to the mainland and the global market'.
The IBM grid computing plan, which was explained to business and government leaders yesterday, also said 'Hong Kong risks sinking into long-term recession' if no action was taken to radically improve its IT infrastructure.
IBM Hong Kong software group executive Ernie Hu believes this move to a shared computing set-up will start slowly, but will eventually pick up steam as users experience its benefits.