Investing 1,2 billions of dollars from IBM in the cloud

This investment includes a network cloud centers, designed to provide customers with greater flexibility, transparency and control over how they manage their data, manage their businesses, and implement IT cloud.To 2014, IBM plans to offer cloud services from 40 data center world-wide to 15 countries and five continents, including North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. IBM will open 15 new centers internationally, expanding the existing global presence of 13 International Data Center from SoftLayer and 12 from IBM. Among the most recent data centers that will start operating are China, the city of Washington, Hong Kong, London, Japan, India, Canada, Mexico City and Dallas. With this announcement, IBM plans to have a data center in all major locations and major financial centers with plans to expand 2015 to the Middle East and Africa. According to some estimates, the global cloud market will grow to 200 billions of dollars to 2020 [IBM Market Intelligence], driven largely by businesses and government agencies delivering cloud services for marketing, product sales and product development, managing their supply chain, and transforming their business practices.

"IBM continues to invest in areas with high growth rates" he said Erich Clementi, head of IBM Global Technology Services. “Last year, IBM made a major investment, adding the $2 billion acquisition of SoftLayer to its existing high-value portfolio of cloud solutions. Today's announcement is another big step in driving IBM's global expansion in the cloud and helping customers transform."

IBM's new investments in this area will enable business customers to position and control their data on a global scale. IBM SoftLayer provides customers with the ability to choose the environment and cloud site that best serve their business needs by "providing visibility and transparency of where data is located, as well as security and security the placement of the data. "

Η IBM SoftLayer states that it is able to offer high-performance services globally throughout the SoftLayer network. The combination of distributed, local data centers and a global network allows customers to place data where needed when needed, enabling them to consolidate or aggregate data as needed. This allows for optimized application performance and responsiveness. The unique network architecture of SoftLayer allows customers to optimize global performance using a private network without being subject to the uncontrolled nature of public networks and the internet.

"Cloudant's pace of international expansion is fueled by the uptime commitment we make to our customers." said Derek Schoettle, CEO of Cloudant, an IBM commercial partner. “Our mission is to be the data layer standard for applications Web and mobile devices. This mission requires us to push application data across the network to as many places as possible. Expanding beyond our current IBM SoftLayer footprint will provide significant value to our business. IBM's investment in expanding its global footprint will not only help fuel our growth, it will also fuel the growth of thousands of Cloudant users worldwide."

In today's world of rapid response, with the multiplication of data from portable devices and social networks, this type of automation and speed of access to data with high availability and control makes IBM SoftLayer's cloud infrastructure an ideal resource for business customers worldwide.

"Cloud represents a growing business investment sector" said Ann Winblad, Co-founder and Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. "Investing in the cloud ecosystem, IBM does not just make it easier for businesses to adopt the cloud and boost innovation, but it also helps new companies of all sizes grow faster," said Winblad.

IBM SoftLayer is the basis of IBM's growing cloud portfolio

The acquisition of SoftLayer represents another major investment for IBM customers. Since its acquisition, 2013, IBM SoftLayer has been offering its services to almost new 2.400 cloud clients.

Indeed, IBM plans to make SoftLayer the basis of its extensive cloud portfolio. The SoftLayer infrastructure will provide a scalable, secure base for providing global cloud services that include IBM's wide range of middleware and software as an IBM SaaS (SaaS) service. SoftLayer's flexibility and global network will also facilitate the faster deployment, deployment, and provisioning of mobile, data and social networking solutions as customers adopt cloud as a platform for providing IT operations and enterprise management.

Recently, IBM made a major investment by establishing IBM Watson Group, a new business unit dedicated to the development and commercialization of cognitive innovations technology and Big Data delivered via cloud. As part of this initiative, IBM will also implement Watson on SoftLayer.

About IBM's cloud computing solutions

IBM is the global leader in the cloud, with an unparalleled portfolio of open cloud solutions that helps customers think, create or leverage its capabilities. No other company has the ability to integrate the unique expertise in the economy with its unparalleled cloud capabilities, having already helped more than 30.000 customers worldwide. Today, IBM has more than 100 SaaS cloud solutions, thousands of skilled professionals with in-depth knowledge of different industries, helping customers transform their businesses, and a network of 40 data centers worldwide.

From 2007, IBM has invested more than 7 billion dollars in 15 acquisitions in order to accelerate its cloud initiatives and create a high-value cloud portfolio. IBM has pioneered 1.560 patents in the cloud sector focusing on promoting innovation. Indeed, IBM was at the top of the annual list of top US patent recipients for 21 consecutive year. IBM processes more than 5,5 millions of customer transactions on a daily basis through the company's public cloud.

For more information on IBM cloud suggestions, visit the site http://www.ibm.com/cloud. To learn more about this announcement, visit the A Smarter Planet blog http://ibm.co/1huAhrv