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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. 7 P8 [( _( k. P( D4 n" x * K8 p. i( A3 V+ bThe 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$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business. & l2 }2 U4 D& F6 `9 p8 Z1 y( Y/ I! s3 E4 C
The Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata. + a: f$ P! p/ X' @+ a4 ]$ v5 j6 O+ X, N O( g, B
Softlayer’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.. x0 z3 ~* B9 ~; |! O! O+ O f5 {
- P3 L3 p! O3 F( @4 MIBM 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. 9 N! ]1 b# o0 L2 \1 b+ Z( e& d7 R% M* @8 v
IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site. + r: e- y: u$ D' R7 O* a c! k( u' ~" i3 [) r
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. 1 G2 L6 D0 ~+ c1 o# C9 x& X4 x. ~% e/ e3 P8 s
IBM 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. - ^% b I# K) b' ]9 e8 {1 r 5 i( S# {& `0 r9 N+ G