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IBM will open a cloud data center facility in Hong Kong for its subsidiary SoftLayer on April 14, according to InformationWeek.- d; t6 t8 R4 u3 E" c; l
1 p2 m5 }: C. L; ^' uThe 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$1.2bn investment for the expansion of its cloud storage business.% n+ b1 }* S# C% ^
3 A$ F" s% x9 ]9 O( qThe Hong Kong facility will have capacity for 15,000 servers and will have network connectivity provided by Equinix, NTT and Tata. 3 [& Z+ x. B5 y" G- e9 t- g$ \7 L5 G" | p: z8 {) V( {1 B
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. * K+ e$ z9 W( A$ ^% m4 d. r) R; t& |7 Y( n: i4 a, H% h
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 g! s/ n3 S) f2 A3 X. f3 a1 f m/ k' \& |, U! p, |IBM’s BlueMix platform-as-a-service on Softlayer - which was announced last month- will also be available from the Hong Kong site. 5 K" w4 V/ ?) Q9 E$ S2 a3 f0 z# b
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. $ E$ j4 L& \ H+ Q( _% n# ] - V/ A1 F; {/ m8 l3 x5 r8 a( KIBM 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. 2 h& R2 i) L/ v# Q4 B% O: d3 R4 R. e4 k* q: A3 X