IBM To Invest Over $1.2 Bln To Expand Cloud Services

(RTTNews) - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Friday announced that it plans to invest over $1.2 billion, to expand its global cloud footprint. IBM plans to have data centers in all major geographies and financial centers, with an aim to expand in the Middle East and Africa in 2015.

The move follows its $2 billion acquisition of cloud technology Softlayer Technologies Inc. last year.

"IBM is continuing to invest in high growth areas. Last year, IBM made a big investment adding the $2 billion acquisition of SoftLayer to its existing high value cloud portfolio. Today's announcement is another major step in driving a global expansion of IBM's cloud footprint and helping clients drive transformation," said Erich Clementi, senior vice president of IBM Global Technology Services.

According to the firm, the investment includes a network of data centers. In the current year, IBM plans to deliver cloud services from 40 data centers worldwide in 15 countries and five continents globally, including North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

IBM said it will open 15 new centers worldwide adding to the existing global footprint of 13 global data centers from SoftLayer and 12 from IBM.

IBM SoftLayer will help clients to choose a cloud environment and location that best suits their business needs. In addition, IBM SoftLayer is able to deliver high performance services globally across the SoftLayer network, IBM said.

The data centers are designed to bring clients greater flexibility, transparency and control over managing their data, run their businesses and deploy their IT operations in the cloud.

The latest data centers to be launched include China, Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, London, Japan, India, Canada, Mexico City and Dallas, the firm noted.

IBM closed Thursday's regular trading at $188.76 on the NYSE. In the pre-market activity, the shares are up 0.13 percent.