IBM has doubled the revenue its cloud business generated in the first quarter of the year (compared with the first quarter of 2011), although it stopped short of saying what that number actually was in its earnings report for the quarter.

The company’s cloud-computing products and services, stamped with the umbrella brand “IBM SmartCloud”, range widely: from helping companies build their own cloud infrastructure to providing infrastructure, platform and software as a service.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the company was raising its 2012 full-year operating earnings per share (EPS) expectations to “at least US$15” as a result of its performance during the quarter. That’s $0.15 up from the previous full-year operating EPS guidance.

“Our investments in growth market countries continued to generate strong revenue growth across software, hardware and services while contributing to the company’s ongoing margin expansion,” Rometty said.

EPS for the quarter was $2.61 – up 13% year over year.

IBM reported net income of $3.1bn on $24.7bn in total revenue for the first quarter. Income was up 7% year over year and revenue was up 1%.

The company splits its business in four basic segments: services, software, hardware and financing.

The services segment, which includes technology and business services, turned over the most revenue in Q1: $14.6bn. The software segment was second, bringing in $5.6bn in sales, and hardware was third, reporting revenue of $3.7bn.

IBM’s financing segment generated the least revenue for the company: $490m.

Revenue generated in growth markets went up by 9% year over year. Revenue in the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – increased 10%.

Of all geographic regions IBM operates in, revenue in the Asia-Pacific markets grew the most in the first quarter: by 4%.