Technology giant IBM is expanding its global cloud data center footprint by opening 4 new facilities in the UK. With this IBM Cloud will have 6 cloud data centers in UK, 16 across Europe and 50+ worldwide.

Infused with cognitive intelligence, the new facilities triple IBM’s cloud center capacity in the UK. With these new data centers, clients will have access to a complete portfolio of IBM cloud services for running their mission-critical enterprise workloads and innovations through over 150 digital services (APIs).

These digital services are available via IBM's development platform, Bluemix and include Watson, IBM's cognitive intelligence technology that allows computers to think and learn like humans, building blocks for innovative Blockchain applications that increase trust in transactions, plus enabling technologies for Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics applications.

“By adding four new Cloud data centers in the UK, IBM is giving local businesses an easy route to the cloud, helping them quickly innovate and respond to market demands," said Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president of IBM Cloud. "IBM is continuing to invest in high growth areas, offering clients higher-value cloud data services such as Watson and Blockchain running on our cloud infrastructure that delivers world-class scalability, performance and security." 

Several UK clients are already taking advantage of the benefits IBM Cloud offers including Dixons Carphone, National Express, National Grid, Shop Direct, Travis Perkins PLC and Wimbledon. Clients choosing IBM Cloud services will benefit from the company's experience across public, private and hybrid cloud deployments and easy access to cloud innovations on a simple pay-as-you-go model, IBM said. They will also benefit from services like load balancing, auto scaling, object storage, bandwidth pooling and Static IPs that are resilient across the cloud data centers in the UK.

IBM further said that with these new facilities, clients will have greater flexibility, transparency and control over managing data, running business operations and deploying IT operations locally in the cloud. The facilities also connect to IBM's public data centers around the world to help clients transfer and replicate their data in multiple locations and quickly balance or reroute workloads between multiple locations.

“Today's announcement by IBM is a further boost for this thriving area, and another vote of confidence which shows Britain is open for business. These new cloud data centers will help our firms work smarter and quicker to become the world-leading businesses of tomorrow”, said Matt Hancock, Minister of State for Digital and Culture.

The first facility will open in Fareham at the end of December, with three more opening in the UK next year. IBM has also signed an agreement to lease space within Ark Data Centres in the UK, which will see the second of the four new cloud data centers fully operational in mid-2017.  Ark is the joint venture partner with the UK Government delivering public sector data center services under the Crown Hosting Framework.  Crown Hosting, based in the same Ark facility, is already being used by a number of public sector departments and agencies.