IBM invests nearly $400 million on cloud computing centres in the US and Japan

01 August 2008

IBM today announced a massive expansion of its cloud computing capabilities, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create two ultra-sophisticated delivery centers that will power the cloud-like computing model that the next era of computing will demand.

IBM will spend $360 million to build its most sophisticated, state-of-the-art data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina.

Built from the ground-up with IBM's new enterprise data center design principles, the center will provide businesses unparalleled access to immense pools of Internet-scale computing technology capable of supporting cloud environments.

This new data center is a key component in IBM's 'project big green' initiative to dramatically increase energy efficiency in the data center as companies balance escalating energy costs with the requirement to handle a rapidly rising amount of data.

"Cloud computing is fundamentally about re-engineering the world's computing infrastructure, to enable game-changing - even life-changing - applications," said Willy Chiu, vice president, IBM High Performance On Demand Solutions. "To IBM, cloud computing is much more than the normal evolution of a data center."

IBM will renovate an existing building on its RTP campus with goals of reusing 95 per cent of the original building's shell, recycling 90 per cent of materials from original building, with 20 per cent of newly purchased material to be from recycled products. This will help create one of the most technologically advanced and energy efficient data centers in the world.