1 T: i$ M- [. ^, P! P# SIBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek. 6 Q; y" N* }/ f+ a/ K; [: U+ D! \4 I4 q5 r
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$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business.# ]+ H- r6 Q# f3 ?1 t1 Q
# B9 O$ z ?1 H! r" | \4 tThe Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata. 7 B; D/ `" j6 Q. s 1 _( o# y( D- Y# Q* u7 ]1 o% tSoftlayer’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.0 @4 R5 I8 E( f1 N
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IBM 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. & g, s+ u. C" `/ w2 V$ T9 e 3 N6 q$ g) U6 m9 Y: |IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site. % X5 I8 M6 p0 o1 l* e5 j' S! ^& A" Y7 Y" @2 f8 u! J
BlueMix 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.. _/ d! g1 J* M
# H+ E5 V1 v R" A5 q/ h7 QIBM 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. 1 Y0 s& O: K1 G + i: c) [# z% j