0 t& ]6 M! ?5 Y+ `7 |, M5 q: {IBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek. @& |/ [: Q) x2 R# w
$ C( |1 d! N8 T p6 ?6 m$ x% TThe 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$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business. 8 L4 t; ]# i5 @8 Z1 |9 D, E" O4 Z. y5 V. o- L
The Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata. ( n# Q* z: [5 S% H0 V, `7 K9 t# K" C ) ~# l' S3 }2 ?, R. M8 r' f1 |Softlayer’s CEO Lance Crosby said in an interview with InformtionWeek the next Softlayer data center sites will most likely be Canada, Mexico, UK and Australia. ' A/ W( o, S. V! i+ d8 P! h N0 o5 [1 d. \
IBM Watson will be available in the new Hong Kong facility making it only one of three facilities to provide the business intelligence engine- the other facilities to provide Watson are in London and Dallas.- F5 W7 d1 H# _) e |0 J
# D2 A& q' j( e/ z0 {IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site.! g+ p( f! ^- d! i s8 u3 R
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BlueMix is an implementation of IBM’s Open Cloud Architecture, leveraging Cloud Foundry to enable developers to rapidly build, deploy, and manage their cloud applications, while tapping a growing ecosystem of available services and runtime frameworks. # v; G' i. s- ^' P 6 ~3 C5 a: ?1 ?( W% V% wIBM said it will follow flexible pricing schemes as it deploys BlueMix, allowing customers to consume it by the hour, by the month, or by the seat. 8 }' [$ [: Q' V % [. H. @ m g$ w, N9 V