IBM opens new Aussie cloud centre, eyes NZ customers

IBM is going toe-to-toe with Microsoft, opening its second SoftLayer cloud centre in Australia, with Kiwi companies expected to be among the customers utilising the centre.

The new Sydney cloud centre joins the Melbourne centre, which launched late last year, and is part of IBM's $1.2 billion investment to expand its cloud services.

Late last year Microsoft launched Australian Azure cloud data centers in Melbourne and Sydney.

New Zealand based businesses are among those already using IBM's SoftLayer global network.

The new Sydney centre offers the full range of SoftLayer cloud infrastructure services, including bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, security services and networking.

Built using SoftLayer's standardised pod design, it has capacity for thousands of physical servers, IBM says.

No specifics on exact capacity or location were provided.

The company says the new facility broadens data redundancy options in Australia and APAC, while providing secure, scalable and customisable infrastructure solutions for both enterprise and born-on-the-web businesses.

IBM says since launching the Melbourne cloud centre late last year, IBM Cloud has added 'hundreds' of new customers and experienced a boom across other SoftLayer facilities in Asia Pacific, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.

Kiwi company Grinding Gear Games uses the SoftLayer global network to host the online action RPG, Path of Exile, across five cloud centres, and says the broadening network means eliminating latency and providing a reliable and enjoyable experience for end users.

"Extremely fast provisioning times and the ability to automate such provisioning allow us to treat SoftLayer's bare metal servers like virtual servers so that we can scale up rapidly when player numbers increase," says Chris Wilson, Grinding Gear Games managing director.

"SoftLayer's free and reliable backend connection between data centers is critical to the stable operation of our game service. As IBM Cloud expands its SoftLayer services to more countries globally, we'll also be expanding the breadth of Path of Exile, simply by hosting servers in each new data center.

This week also saw the opening of a new IBM SoftLayer cloud centre in Canada, as the vendor continues its global cloud expansion.