IBM has opened its first cloud data center in Cornaredo, Italy.
As a limited period promotional offer, IBM is offering a discount of $500 on the first orders in the new Milan data center.
The Milan data center has a capacity for up to 11,000 servers, a power rating of 2.8 megawatts, and a Tier III design.
IBM said the Milan facility offers IBM Cloud infrastructure services, including bare metal and virtual servers, storage, security services, and networking. These services can be deployed on demand with full remote access and control through a customer Web portal or API, allowing customers to create their ideal public, private, or hybrid cloud environments.
IBM earlier announced its plan to invest $1.2 billion in 2014 to expand its global cloud footprint. The Milan data center expands the total number of IBM Cloud data centers to more than 40 worldwide, which includes 24 SoftLayer data centers.
Cloud-computing market in Italy, according to The Polytechnic University of Milan’s Observatory of Cloud and ICT as a Service, saw 31 percent year-over-year growth in 2014, with a total market spend of $1.33 billion.
“The Italian IT sector is changing as startups and enterprises alike are increasingly turning to the cloud to optimize infrastructure, lower IT costs, create new revenue streams, and spur innovation,” said Marc Jones, chief technology officer for SoftLayer, an IBM Company.
IBM Cloud already supports several Italian customers including ROIALTY, a marketing platform to deliver personalized customer engagement and digital loyalty programs.
Stefano Tonella, COO of ROIALTY, said: “IBM Cloud’s network, which offers low-latency connections, combined with SoftLayer bare metal servers, is key to our success. Having a data center near our headquarters in Milan will create even better performance for our customers.”
Elica, a designer and manufacturer of kitchen hoods for domestic use, relies on IBM Cloud to compute, analyze, and connect data to give their products a competitive edge.
Francesco Casoli, chairman of Elica, said: “The IBM Cloud, based on SoftLayer infrastructure, allows us to manage unpredictable data in a fast and innovative way, reducing any investment risks and enabling us to keep costs under control.”
