TOKYO: IBM has launched its first cloud data centre with SoftLayer in Japan, located in Tokyo. The opening follows recent SoftLayer cloud data centre launches in Melbourne and Paris and is part of IBM’s USD 1.2 billion investment to expand its global cloud footprint.
IBM said the new Tokyo centre will complement other SoftLayer resources located in cities within the Asia-Pacific region, including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Melbourne. The company added that the centre will address the industry’s growing concerns about data residency and privacy by offering a local Japanese facility to compute and store sensitive data that needs to remain in country.
IBM noted that its customer base in Japan increased more than 600 percent in the year to its third quarter, and that Japanese customers using its SoftLayer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) now total more than 1,000. SoftLayer’s global network provides 10Gbps connections to SoftLayer services.
To mark the opening, IBM said customers can receive USD 500.00 off of new orders for the Tokyo cloud data centre for the first month of service, for a limited time.