Technology giant, IBM today launched public data centre in Chennai to tap into growing demand from financial services and government sectors.
Technology giant, IBM today launched public data centre in Chennai to tap into growing demand from financial services and government sectors.
Part of the company’s global investment of $1.2 billion, it is IBM’s second such centre in India. The first one in Mumbai offers private cloud computing services. Its cloud clients include Tata Sky, Bharat Light and Power, Janalakshmi Financial Services and Mankind Pharma.
“With a local on ramp to IBM Cloud, Indian customers, especially those in regulated industries, gain more flexibility to store and compute data within the country,” said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice-President, IBM Cloud.
This is IBM’s 42nd data centre in its expansive network, providing users with performance and disaster recovery to ensure business continuity, LeBlanc added. IBM has cloud centres in cities such as London, Beijing, Melbourne, Toronto and Dallas.
The centre will help IBM tap into government initiatives like ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart Cities’. It will also enable the company to tap into data sensitive sectors like banking, financial services and telecom that often mandate that data be hosted in local data centres.
Earlier this year, Microsoft had also announced setting up of three local data centres in India to tap into what it believes is a $2 trillion cloud opportunity.
IBM has also partnered IT industry body Nasscom for the latter’s 10,000 startups initiative. “In an effort to accelerate digital transformation both at the enterprise and startup level, IBM is establishing a partnership with Nasscom to launch Techstartup.in, a digital hub wherein the entire Indian startup ecosystem, including angels, mentors, investors, academia and venture capitalists, can interact with each other to grow the cloud market,” said Sandy Carter, GM, Cloud Ecosystem and Developers, IBM.
Highlighting the role that the Chennai data centre can play for startups, LeBlanc said developers and startups are an integral part of India’s ecosystem and key to 'Digital India' initiative.
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