IDG News Service - IBM opened a new data center in South Korea on Thursday and said it is building another one in Auckland, New Zealand, to address a surge in demand for cloud computing and IT services in the Asia-Pacific region.
The company also announced the opening of a cloud computing lab in Hong Kong.
The total investment by IBM in these three facilities is about US$100 million, said James M. Larkin, a spokesman for IBM Global Services.
The company, which already has over 400 data centers worldwide, will continue to invest in new data centers that offer cloud computing capabilities, while upgrading existing data centers to support cloud computing, Larkin said.
IBM is planning to announce by February next year a new data center in Raleigh, North Carolina, he added.
The data center at Auckland will be in operation by 2010 with IBM investing about US$57 million in that center over the next ten years. IBM will locate the data center at Highbrook Business Park in East Tamaki.
The 56,000 square-foot facility will include a 16,000 square-foot data center, IBM said. The company can add more stages to expand the data center as demand rises, it added.
The center will support IBM's clients in New Zealand and neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Larkin said.
The data center in Seoul will provide IT services including strategic outsourcing, e-business hosting and disaster recovery to more than 20 clients which have entered into outsourcing agreements with the company, IBM said. The center was built using green technology, according to the company.
The Cloud Computing Laboratory in Hong Kong is a development and services center, focusing on LotusLive messaging development, testing, technical support and services delivery, IBM said.
LotusLive is IBM's collection of integrated, online collaboration solutions and social networking services for businesses.
The lab, which is IBM's tenth cloud computing lab worldwide, builds on the email technology and expertise of Outblaze, a company in Hong Kong, whose messaging assets were acquired by IBM earlier this year and included in the Lotus brand of collaboration services.
The lab is part of the IBM China Development Laboratory which has over 5,000 developers.
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