New York:
IBM announced plans to invest over USD 1.2 billion to expand its global cloud computing service footprint in countries like India, the UK and US.
"IBM is continuing to invest in high growth areas," said Erich Clementi, senior vice president of IBM Global Technology Services.
Cloud computing is a term used to describe a variety of computing concepts that involve a large number of computers connected through a real-time communication network like the Internet.
"Today's announcement is another major step in driving a global expansion of IBM’s cloud footprint and helping clients drive transformation," said Clementi.
The investment includes a network of cloud centres designed to bring clients greater flexibility, transparency and control over how they manage their data, run their business and deploy their IT operations locally in the cloud.
This year IBM plans to deliver cloud services from 40 data centres worldwide in 15 countries and five continents globally, including North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
IBM will open 15 new centres worldwide adding to the existing global footprint of 13 global data centres from SoftLayer and 12 from IBM.
Among the newest data centres to launch are China, Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, London, Japan, India, Canada, Mexico City and Dallas.
With this announcement, IBM plans to have data centres in all major geographies and financial centres with plans to expand in the Middle East and Africa in 2015.
By some estimates, the global cloud market is set to grow to USD 200 billion by 2020 driven largely by businesses and government agencies deploying cloud services to market, sell, develop products, manage their supply chain and transform their business practices.
"Last year, IBM made a big investment adding the USD 2 billion acquisition of SoftLayer to its existing high value cloud portfolio," Clementi said.
The new cloud investments IBM is making will provide business clients the ability to place and control their data globally, according to the company press release.
Since 2007, IBM has invested more than USD 7 billion in 15 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio, it said.
