! b8 u' \* p1 N pIBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek. 8 t. u* B. \! I+ H $ _" @1 n1 h1 y2 jThe 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.& @4 |% M: p- c' g
+ y; R J) f U& ?The Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata. |& x8 Q& m: [4 _2 }7 S2 `0 C; x $ F$ Y5 `( I: BSoftlayer’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+ w" ~3 @' m) t ) [, ? h5 t; M. Z/ ^: ?+ }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.' i; c5 U5 V: T8 i& L$ _4 a% k2 j
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IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site.) z* q# n" q: l
: m5 H V9 h. b% {% PBlueMix 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.( F+ w. D" S% N% b9 ^
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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. , M: A) I8 b! ^5 g! I- `% b" a7 c/ e3 X4 P# q$ Y( k' [