) b! A: U& e* S2 l( u; h-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- , h# r- z" y g3 X1 [. J 5 Z, s0 \; O% QIBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek. : U8 c% W% G- r+ ?# o5 A 4 y( F& w! f9 hThe 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$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business.0 D% }) m O: g7 Q4 x6 `
1 m5 o3 |. u1 @8 |$ ^: i. S+ qThe Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata.7 S6 Q R/ g! @4 }
1 w" q5 J+ w' f9 X9 x% v* `; g/ s% cSoftlayer’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. & t, L) j ?+ R; f2 Z* L% f! ?7 b9 i+ x5 r9 k! y& Q
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. 3 ]3 Y; v9 k0 Q }) ~ 8 ~* f) M: ~/ h. Y$ s! f6 |5 UIBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site. 6 u" A8 g- f! n3 s, [ ! t! m* l* }" n# ^' L, j$ |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.+ Z& y* k8 f9 F7 y* D
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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. 8 t& m$ u+ ^5 D9 X; `3 Z3 I& H( L J5 h* q% ^2 g! U