% z0 s6 j' f; p* Z1 cIBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek.8 w. [7 [' B! U+ J# H- f
8 A" D _( q' A& R0 IThe 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.% Z& G' W3 p4 c8 H7 ?7 F X
2 |. O: h5 l mThe Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata. 7 Q5 t4 r _* Z! q' Q2 A0 Y0 q, J) R% L* D
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. $ s: P7 t4 Y/ Z$ M e& {% r # K& O6 {, b& i: c+ `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. ( r1 {3 e" i2 Q. u* O7 Y& D+ ~1 H' O
IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site., b/ p2 k3 l" d
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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. , v% ]# ^) |+ ~6 F4 A9 |' q1 s$ G X1 E4 s3 f3 ?: r! k6 X
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.& R7 w$ K. X: a+ i0 L2 D