IBM To Open $17m Colombian Cloud Facility

IBM plans to invest $17 million (£11m) in a new cloud data centre located in Bogota, Colombia. This is the 25th cloud centre IBM has opened globally.

IBM said the new centre will provide Colombian companies with cloud computing and big data services. The new facility expands the $8 million investment IBM made in Colombia when the company opened a data centre in 2011.

Business innovation

Through the new data centre, IBM hopes to contribute to and further strengthen business innovation in the local banking, health care, food, insurance, and oil and gas industries, among others, allowing them to benefit from a new wave of transformation in services with cloud, Smarter Systems and big data capabilities that help drive economic growth, sustainable development and social progress, IBM said.

“In the current competitive environment, Colombia companies are looking for high-value solutions that help them solve complexity through innovation and business insight by addressing organic growth and productivity issues,” Francisco Thiermann, general manager IBM Colombia, said in a statement. “Our new data centre and our professionals aim to contribute to the private and public companies’ development and the countries progress. This new investment showcases our clients’ trust in our expertise and services, as well as the commitment IBM has made to the country’s growth.”

With the help of IBM business expertise and best practices, cloud computing enables enterprises to efficiently deliver new services to their customers, expand into new markets, incorporate mobile devices and grow revenue.

According to Colombian consulting firm Vision Growth Consulting, “Colombia is one of the fastest growing countries outsourcing data centre services in Latin America, with an estimated 15.3 percent growth of the data centre services market in Colombia in 2013, mainly driven by cloud computing, among others, which is already a reality in the country.”

IBM was recently named by IDC as the global leader of professional services on cloud technology, due to its deep knowledge and experience in developing innovative solutions, supporting a large amount of customers, research and innovation, its global investments and strong commitment to help large companies transform their business with cloud technology.

Latin American investment

IBM has made multimillion-dollar investments in Latin America since 2009, opening nine IT Services Centres located in Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay; the centres provide round-the-clock services. Globally, IBM has more than 70 Service Delivery Centres and more than 400 data centres in 170 countries covering more than 40 languages.

Cloud computing is one IBM’s top growth areas. IBM has invested $6 billion in more than a dozen cloud acquisitions since 2007, including, most recently, SoftLayer to extend IBM’s public cloud capabilities and help clients with an easy on-ramp to the enterprise cloud. In the first half of 2013, IBM reported 70 percent growth in revenue from cloud computing. IBM expects to generate $7 billion in annual revenue from cloud computing by 2015.

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Originally published on eWeek.