Thanks to a rental agreement between La Caixa and IBM, the new 'IBM Center' is to be located on the premises of the bank’s Data Processing Centre in Barcelona

The US company IBM has opened its first cloud centre in Spain. The location chosen was Cerdañola del Vallés in Barcelona, and it is the ninth such centre that the company has set up around the world.

 

From this centre, which is specially designed for productive loads and critical business processes, IBM will be able to offer its cloud services to customers throughout the globe.

 

How much investment did it take to start this project?

According to the company, the investment in this centre has been about US$ 8 million (around EUR 6 million).


The opening of this new centre reaffirms IBM’s firm commitment to cloud technology. The company also recently confirmed that it will fulfil its plans to generate US$ 7 billion in turnover in 2015 in the area of cloud computing (approximately EUR 5.170 billion).

 

What services will this new centre be offering?

The new cloudcentre will be offering a wide range of cloud infrastructure and platform services. These solutions are tailored not only to the business needs of large companies and public institutions, but also to small and medium enterprises.

 

Marta Martínez, President of IBM Spain, says that “the opening of this cloud centre in Spain is another step forward in our company’s firm commitment to this technology, which will undoubtedly contribute to fostering innovation in companies and institutions of all sizes. The fact that technological services can be provided from Barcelona to clients anywhere in the world is also a source of pride for us, in that it places our technicians and professionals at the worldwide cutting edge and demonstrates that our country can compete successfully in an increasingly global market”.

 

Synergies with La Caixa’s Data Processing Centre

IBM is already working in the same site as La Caixa’s Data Processing Centre, which owns the building. The new cloud centre, therefore, will benefit from the synergies generated there in its activities with the bank, a strategic partner to IBM for the past 50 years.
The technological infrastructure of La Caixa’s Data Processing Centre in 2013 was selected by the British publication The Banker for the Innovation Award in the “Green IT” category, for the high level of efficiency and low power consumption at its plant, which has allowed energy savings of 41%.



Commitment by IBM to Cloud services

IBM has been one of the pioneering companies in making a solid commitment to cloud services, which has led to an existing customer base of over 4,000 companies, more than one million virtual machines under management and the processing of more than 200 million cloud transactions a day.

 

In line with this firm commitment to cloud technology, IBM announced  last July that it had completed the acquisition of Softlayer, the world’s largest supplier of cloud computing infrastructure.

 

IBM also includes cloud solutions in its offering in the form of  “software as a service” (SaaS), an option that allows companies to reduce costs and simplify implementation.