IBM Opens New SoftLayer Datacenter
IBM today announced the opening of a new SoftLayer data center in Hong Kong to meet growing customer demand for its cloud-based IT services. The data center is the first of 15 new data centers that the company will open as part of a $1.2-billion dollar investment to strengthen and extend IBM cloud services in Asia and around the world.
"Our expansion into Hong Kong gives us a stronger Asian market presence as well as added proximity and access to our growing customer base in region," said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer, an IBM Company. "This new data center gives the fast-growing, entrepreneurial businesses that Hong Kong is known for a local facility to tap into SoftLayer's complete portfolio of cloud services."
SoftLayer provides on-demand cloud infrastructure that includes bare metal and virtual servers, storage, and networking all on a single platform, with full customer access and control. These enterprise-grade components give users the ability to create their ideal infrastructure environment -- public, private, as well as hybrid cloud -- capable of supporting the most demanding applications and workloads.
A key to these unique capabilities is how SoftLayer builds its data centers around the world in a consistent, standardized format. Each data center is able to deliver the same portfolio of fully automated services, along with a private and secure network that connects all data centers.
The Hong Kong data center follows this approach and will have capacity for more than 15,000 physical servers and the trademark SoftLayer network of networks architecture. It adds to an existing Asia footprint that already includes the Singapore data center and network Points of Presence (PoPs) in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo. With network connectivity provided by multiple Tier-1 network carriers, including NTT, Tata, and Equinix, customers and end users in region have redundant network protection, high-speed throughput, and a connection to SoftLayer services with less than 40 milliseconds of latency.
Innovative companies in Asia and around the world, such as AdNear, Distil Networks,Tiket.com, Simpli.fi, 6waves, and Beijing Elex, already take advantage of SoftLayer's Asia footprint to improve cloud performance, provide a better experience to their end users, and expand their customer base in the region.
"AdNear has been building its capabilities on SoftLayer's infrastructure services over the past two years," said Anil Mathews, founder and CEO of AdNear. "The ability to easily access SoftLayer's high-performance and scalable infrastructure gives us a competitive advantage that we don't get anywhere else. We congratulate SoftLayer on increasing their presence in Asia. The new data center in Hong Kong will provide startups and mature businesses alike with a foundation to deliver cloud-based services to their end-users."
Today's news is a continuation of IBM's commitment to investing $1.2 billion to expand its global cloud operations in all major geographies and financial centers, increasing the reach and capability of a business' IT operations.
SoftLayer became part of IBM back in July 2013 and is now the foundation for the company's cloud portfolio of services. Earlier this year, IBM announced a $1 billion investment in BlueMix, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) built on SoftLayer enabling developers to take advantage of cloud capabilities and offering IBM's middleware software as a cloud service. These investments are helping customers take advantage of cloud services based on SoftLayer's infrastructure that provide higher performance, scale, and security.
