IBM opens cloud data centre in Chennai

IBM has opened its first public cloud data center in Chennai, India.

Besides helping government initiatives like “Digital India” and “Smart Cities”, the data centre will help IBM tap into data sensitive sectors like banking, financial services, and telecom that often require that data be hosted in local data centres.

The Chennai data centre will offer Softlayer infrastructure services. The Chennai data center joins IBM’s Mumbai cloud centre and is part of an expansive network of data centres that blanket the globe. The company has also established a partnership with National Association of Software and Services Companies (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.

It has also teamed up with information technology leaders like Tech Mahindra, CSC and Accenture to offer its cloud solutions, including IBM Bluemix, to developer communities.

In addition, the company said it is introducing a software developer programme called developerWorks Premium in India that will allow developers access IBM’s software tools and credits to utilise cloud capacity they need to prototype and deliver new cloud projects.

Robert LeBlanc, a senior VP of IBM Cloud, said that the Indian cloud market is set to grow exponentially.

The only country that has more developers than India today is the USA, and that’s going to change by 2018, when India will have the world’s largest developer population, according to estimates by Evans Data Corp, a market research firm that tracks developer population globally.

He said that it will work with NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups programme to give local developers and engineers the skills they need to help grow the market.

In 2013, IBM bought SoftLayer for $2 billion to rival other big companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

“When we add a SoftLayer data center in India, you’ll obviously access servers in that facility much more quickly, and when you want content from a server in our Singapore data center, you’ll be routed through that new data center’s network point of presence in India so that the long haul from India to Singapore will happen entirely on the private network we control and optimize”, Crosby wrote.