Enterprise IT vendor IBM has opened its first cloud data center with SoftLayer in Frankfurt, Germany.
The new data center is part of IBM’s $1.2 billion investment to expand its cloud footprint globally.
IBM also announced $500 off on new purchases for a limited period.
The new cloud center will assist enterprise clients to meet Germany and Europe’s strict security and data privacy regulations, improving application performance by lowering latency for local customers, said IBM.
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Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer, an IBM Company, said: “Frankfurt facility will allow German clients to benefit from in-country data storage, a requirement in many industries to comply with German data protection laws.”
The Frankfurt facility offers 10Gbps connections to SoftLayer services, with only 7 milliseconds of latency from SoftLayer’s Amsterdam facility and less than 330 milliseconds of latency from other SoftLayer cloud data centers around the world.
The cloud center also complements existing European IBM Cloud facilities in Amsterdam, London, and Parisand broadens redundancy options and geographic diversity within EMEA and around the world by enabling backups that can be replicated and integrated in any other SoftLayer cloud data center, with free unmetered bandwidth between locations.
With presence in Germany, IBM is tapping a growing cloud market. For instance, the number of German enterprises using the cloud grew 32 percent between 2012 and 2013. The value of the cloud market in Germany will be €18 billion by 2017, said The Experton Group.
IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer infrastructure is used by companies in the gaming, digital marketing and advertising, and online and IT services businesses.
For instance, IBM’s German customer Avira introduced several new Internet security products, all built on IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer infrastructure.
Jason Radisson, executive vice president of online business for Avira, said: “SoftLayer infrastructure is handling hundreds of millions of requests per hour at peak times. Based on this experience, SoftLayer has become our go-to cloud infrastructure partner for scaling new products.”
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
