IBM has become the latest company to boost its cloud data centre offering in the UK, announcing plans to add four new cloud data centres, bringing its total in the country to six.

IBM plans to go live with new cloud data centres from 2017 – Photo credit: Fotolia

The locations of all the data centres – which brings IBM’s worldwide total to more than 50 – have not been revealed, but one will be within the Ark Data Centres, the joint venture partners with the government on the Crown Hosting Framework.

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IBM said that Crown Hosting was based in the same facility as the one in which it has leased space from Ark, adding that Crown Hosting was “already being used by a number of public sector departments and agencies”.

The company’s move to open more data centres comes after both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have announced plans for more cloud data centres in the UK.

Commenting on IBM’s announcement, Kate Hanaghan, research director for infrastructure at TechMarketView, said that it was “an interesting move, especially given that Amazon Web Services has been ramping up its sales to government via the G-Cloud”.

She added: “IBM’s aim is not, however, to compete directly with the generic infrastructure-as-a-service offerings from the hyperscale public cloud providers”.

Instead, she said that the infrastructure inside the IBM data centres aimed to “steer clients beyond generic IaaS towards cloud-based platforms that support the delivery of new types of services”.

IBM said in its statement that the centres would offer greater access for cognitive intelligence services through its Watson platform, and Internet of Things and Blockchain platforms – something that the government has repeatedly indicated its interest in.