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IBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek. % U7 D- u/ I+ S) R/ x6 N! l6 |+ G6 d# u: v5 l8 T
The opening of the Hong Kong facility will mark the first of 15 data centers IBM said it is building throughout the year as part of a US$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business.2 H D" U' H, c; b/ K' X! c
( D6 h/ c( G J/ x. V0 m8 yThe Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata.: J( V% o5 }; \2 \4 f" k5 w3 V% O& H
3 r7 a" L9 C! p& vSoftlayer’s CEO Lance Crosby said in an interview with InformtionWeek the next Softlayer data center sites will most likely be Canada, Mexico, UK and Australia.3 D8 a- v6 R8 M2 B6 H E$ o
% d A# L3 I6 `- O- A6 NIBM Watson will be available in the new Hong Kong facility making it only one of three facilities to provide the business intelligence engine- the other facilities to provide Watson are in London and Dallas. e2 Z2 ?7 g! c( ^$ O4 }" B/ g# a! M _$ l & Q( \& S/ t7 n0 FIBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site.1 w5 R, W. V+ @) Z2 F4 r# E
- @$ L: s. w& ?- B& r: |0 jBlueMix is an implementation of IBM’s Open Cloud Architecture, leveraging Cloud Foundry to enable developers to rapidly build, deploy, and manage their cloud applications, while tapping a growing ecosystem of available services and runtime frameworks. $ @7 q& y# o; {, g# E" X7 U0 \+ U! C ' j) K% q7 i4 g5 P6 d7 E+ kIBM said it will follow flexible pricing schemes as it deploys BlueMix, allowing customers to consume it by the hour, by the month, or by the seat.6 I' X) y l2 R$ Y R
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