IBM is all set to open a new SoftLayer London data centre as a part of its $1.2 billion global expansion initiative aimed at expanding the company’s cloud footprint to 40 data centres in 15 countries across five continents by the end of 2014.
The London data centre is one of the fifteen data centres that the company plans to open globally this year, with Paris and Frankfurt centres to follow, in the line sometime later this year.
The facility, with capacity for more than 15,000 physical servers, will offer a full range of SoftLayer cloud services including virtual servers, bare metal servers, storage and networking. The new facility will complement the already existing Amsterdam facility and London network Point of Presence (PoP).
IBM claims that opening a data centre in London will be beneficial for UK based businesses. London, being one of the key cloud markets, has headquarters of around one third of the world’s largest companies. Some of the world’s largest financial institutions are already operating there. Furthermore, the UK city is home to one of the world’s largest communities for technology startups, incubators and entrepreneurs.
Lance Crosby, chief executive officer at SoftLayer, said the company already has a huge customer base in London, and that the new data centre will allow the company to serve them better.
Orders for the London data centre will begin later this month. IBM also gifts a special offer that gives up to £293 ($500) off on new orders for a limited period of time.
