Earlier this week, IBM revealed its financial commitment to invest further in cloud-enabled facilities; building the 80 million ( New Zealand dollar) worth of data center in Auckland, which is scheduled to be completed in 2010, and adding a new research laboratory in Hong Kong for the development of cloud-based collaborative applications.  According to Joe Dzaluk, vice president of infrastructure services at IBM, investing in new facilities is part of the company’s three-year program to update and expand its worldwide network of 488 data centers ( including both IBM owned and client data centers managed by IBM).

From a quantitative point of view, having a total of 488 data centers is already a fairly resourceful asset.  Seemingly, IBM is not investing for quantity purposes.  What is the motive behind the move?  How can the technology giant possibly profit from its infrastructure investment?

IBM is making its bet on two enterprise demand trends, namely data center outsourcing and cloud computing adoption.

Data center outsourcing is not a brand new demand but there is a sign of growing in the mid-sized and large enterprise segments.  As CIOs come to terms with rapid equipment depreciation, increasing power consumption, and surging maintenance costs,  data center outsourcing makes business sense.  Together with the constant pressure to reduce costs and control IT spending, more and more business organizations are turning to IT outsourcers for help.   This is evident in Yankee Group Anywhere Enterprise—Large: 2009 U.S. Transforming Infrastructure and Transforming Applications Survey, one-third of enterprise respondents( with 500 or more employees) stated that 50 percent  or more of their data center resources are outsourced to a third-party provider for management and support.

In bad economic times, cost-savings is an obvious entry point for any emerging technology to get the attention of potential customers. The economics of cloud computing has caught the attention of enterprise customers that are looking for operational efficiency without compromising performance. As the economy has yet to fully recover, costs will continue to play a role in driving enterprise cloud adoption. According to our survey results, 59 percent of enterprise respondents (with 500 or more employees) estimate that more than 30 percent of their internal IT infrastructure (such as servers and applications) will shift to cloud computing services in the next 24 months.

For IBM, the two enterprise trends represent a tremendous growth opportunity.  But still, the technology giant is mindful when making its strategic move elsewhere.  Evidently, Asia Pacific is a region of growing interest for IBM to harness the cloud.

Will Asia Pacific be the direction of cloud diffusion?