Last month IBM announced plans to invest $1.2 billion in expanding its cloud footprint. IBM will deliver cloud services from 25 existing data centers and 15 new data centers in 2014. In the Asia Pacific region, IBM plans to open new data centers in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, and Japan.
 
In the last two quarters of 2013, leading cloud hosting vendors announced plans to set up new data centers in Asia Pacific. Given the growing data privacy concerns among enterprises in the region, this momentum will only increase in 2014.
 
IBM’s cloud will accelerate cloud adoption among enterprise customers. Regional data centers will give IBM customers the ability to control the placement of their data and get consistent performance without worrying about the financial stability of the service provider. IBM aims to overcome customers’ concerns about a shared public cloud by offering the flexibility to host a completely dedicated private cloud in an IBM data center.
 
To accelerate the adoption of IBM’s cloud, the company should use an integrated end-to-end solution for business stakeholders and drive business growth by focusing on satisfying its existing enterprise customers.
 
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