IBM Opens Its 48th Data Centre And Norway’s First

IBM has opened its 48th data centre just outside of Olso in Norway, as the technology giant continues to offer up local access to the IBM Cloud.

The new facility is Big Blue’s twelfth data centre in Europe and is located 30 kilometres outside of the Norwegian capital. The firm claimed it is the industry’s first cloud data centre in that region.

New Facility

IBM has been steadily opening new facilities after it announced in early 2014 that it was investing over $1 billion (£610m) towards new data centres round the world, in order to deal with the continued demand for cloud computing.

IBM of course bought cloud infrastructure business SoftLayer back in June 2013 for around $2 billion, a move which triggered the expansion of its cloud services.

“Now customers throughout the region will have local access to a complete portfolio of IBM cloud services for running mission critical enterprise workloads, including IBM Bluemix, Watson and analytics capabilities,” said IBM of its latest facility.

“We are committed to providing global and local clients the fastest and easiest onramp to the IBM Cloud to accelerate their digital transformation,” said Robert LeBlanc, senior VP of IBM Cloud. “This investment will provide Nordic customers, especially those in regulated industries, with more flexibility to manage and gain insight into data within the region.”

Earlier this week IBM launched a plethora of systems and services aimed at helping firms with the complexities of a hybrid cloud environment.

“We enable our partners and clients to keep their data securely within the country, while being able to leverage existing IT investments, which is a key differentiator for IBM,” said Arne Norheim, CEO of IBM Norway.

“Local access to IBM’s global network of public cloud data centres provides the ideal flexibility for our customers,” said Norheim. “The new cloud data centre is designed to fuel support for innovation and quick adoption of new solutions that will help improve business efficiency.”

The firm said that the new Norwegian facility will offer “the full range of IBM Cloud infrastructure services, including bare metal and virtual servers, storage, security services, and networking.”

Cloud Focus

The Cloud is an important focus for IBM going forward. In July for example it revealed that overall profits had fallen nearly 30 percent in the second quarter, marking the 17th straight quarter of revenue decline for IBM.

But at the same time IBM’s Cloud-as-a-Service recorded an annual run rate of $6.7 billion (£5.1bn), up 50 percent year over year.

There is no detail on the green technologies in use at the new Norwegian facility, but IBM is a well known user of a number of energy saving techniques.

For example, its data centre in Bengaluru (also known as Bangalore) has a 50 kW solar farm on its roof, to provide power directly to the facility’s equipment.

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