IBM SA expands local business with cloud data centre and lab

IBM South Africa today (13 September 2011) announced the expansion of its cloud computing services for clients in Southern Africa with the addition of a new IBM Cloud Data Centre and Cloud Lab in Johannesburg.

The new additions to the existing Business Continuity and Recovery Service Centre (BCRS), will serve to augment the company’s global cloud offering which features in over 50 countries with centres based in Singapore, Germany, Canada and the United States.

Significantly, South Africa is only the fourth country in the world to benefit from the services of both a Cloud Data Centre and a Cloud Lab.

The IBM Cloud Data Centre will deliver IBM’s SmartCloud enterprise class services which include a broad spectrum of secure managed services to run diverse workloads across predominantly hybrid private cloud delivery methods.

According to Werner Lindemann, Vice President for Global Technology Services at IBM Sub-Saharan Africa, this is the first opportunity for enterprise clients in South Africa to benefit from hybrid private cloud offerings which offer predetermined service level agreements on a software as a service (SaaS) or utility based computing model while also conforming to governance issues within data storage.

Significantly, Lindemann added this is the first real “enterprise classes, catalogue based cloud product to be released in South Africa” commenting that “67% of CIOs questioned by IBM globally are focusing heavily on cloud related applications in 2011”.

When questioned over the issue of public cloud offerings Lindemann added that IBM would continue to focus on enterprise standard cloud based systems which predominantly cater for private cloud needs – commenting that this is the company’s true field of expertise.

Furthermore, the Cloud Lab will help businesses, government and research institutions to adopt and reap the benefits of cloud technologies while helping IBM Business Partners cloud enable their technologies and gain the sales and skills needed to take advantage of this new market.