IBM

IBM and Microsoft have penetrated into European markets by establishing cloud centers in some of the cities in Norway and Germany. Microsoft has opened a cloud region in Germany, making use of servers in Magdeburg and Frankfurt data centers. In order to prevent a legal battle with the American law enforcement agencies whose responsibility is to control access to customers’ private data stored abroad, the company has partnered with Deutsche Telekom. The agreement has given Deutsche Telekom T-Systems full control of the stored data in the region belonging to Microsoft cloud customers. This partnership has provided stability to Microsoft’s new cloud market in Germany.

IBM has opened a new data center in Norway. This is the first cloud infrastructure in the Nordic owned by IBM. By launching a cloud data center in this country, IBM makes a total of 48 cloud data infrastructures globally. Since 2014, the company has made tremendous growth most of which have been fueled by its acquisition of SoftLayer.

When examining the servers in IBM SoftLayer data center in Dallas year 2014, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Lance Crosby said that the company was planning to spend about 1.2 billion dollars to expand its cloud services. Indeed, by launching a data center in Norway, the company expands beyond its strategic plan set in 2014 to establish 40 data centers globally targeting a total of 15 countries. During that time, the company was aiming at building additional data centers in China, Washington DC, Japan, Mexico, London, Canada and India. In addition, the company was planning to extend its cloud services in the Middle East and Africa as well by the end of 2015. This shows that IBM has had a history of successful expansion in the global cloud data market.

Currently, IBM and Microsoft are leading in the cloud data services market as they have many data centers compared to other major competitors in the market such as Amazon. Though they do not have the as much revenue as other players, the two companies provide cloud data customers with numerous options for their data storage by ensuring that there are adequate data centers to cater for the increasing demand for the services.

The move by IBM and Microsoft to expand their cloud data services in the European market may be seen as a strategy to counter the stiff competition existing in the cloud industry. In the recent past, Google made a move in allocating additional resources to capture Oracle and enterprise cloud users. In fact, Google has moved further in the last one month to claim a bigger space in the cloud data industry.

It should be remembered that bare metal cloud data services are core to IBM’s growth strategy as it distinguishes the company among other top players such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. The data sovereignty rule in Germany prompted Microsoft to set up a cloud data center within the country to cater for cloud users who cannot store their data overseas.