0 J9 J6 j* I. W7 R# d0 s-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- & x! D6 i% X8 Y & h( ^# k( ~" ~1 P% t* a) n" V3 u* v$ EIBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek.# a. F5 {: f) _$ ^
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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$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business.3 v" _( }, Z. b& ]' L$ w
# ^4 t6 u- x# k6 }The Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata./ K# O5 e/ M( F$ u
, t# a( f* t$ N; ]$ {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.! o+ O: m: X1 b0 W7 Z
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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. ( F; l" W' s! T# s" O# ~" b d, Y# R4 {/ B+ q
IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site.: k9 A: o. y, ^ M! m4 G" q
- g4 q* b4 _) l3 s% e2 cBlueMix 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. " d7 H2 D. s: D2 y5 ]) T6 s 9 t3 {) L' E& e( j: EIBM 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. 3 V( G8 m* d0 @8 ] @ ' K0 N$ U! b1 i; I& M; K