Microsoft and IBM launch new cloud data centres in Europe

Microsoft and IBM both recently launched new cloud data centres in Europe. With the move, each company added a new country to the list of markets users could choose to store their data in.

Microsoft partnered Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to launch its first cloud region in Germany, served out of data centres in Magdeburg and Frankfurt.

The software giant gave T-Systems full control of Microsoft cloud customers' data stored in the region, in a bid to avoid another legal run-in with US law-enforcement officials over access to private customer data stored overseas.

IBM's launch of a data centre in Norway, was its first cloud data centre launch in the Nordics and its 48th cloud data centre worldwide.

It has been expanding physical infrastructure that powered its cloud services aggressively since 2014. It had, the year before acquired SoftLayer and earmarked $1.2 billion for global cloud data centre buildout.

Though the companies are not leading the cloud services market in terms of revenue, both IBM and Microsoft had more data centres supporting their cloud services than any other player in the market, including Amazon Web Services.

Meanwhile, competition continues to increase in the cloud services market, especially in the market for enterprise cloud services.

In addition to competition from AWS, the leader in the space, Microsoft and IBM face competition from Google, which recently decided add resources behind pursuing enterprise cloud customers and Oracle.

Also, Australia's Telstra is pushing into the global provider sphere with two recently launched cloud products. Its efforts in the direction are getting strong support from its Cloud Gateway and management services dashboard which are gaining credence in the cloud services market.

According to Jim Fagan, director of Platforms in Telstra's Global Products business, while Australia was still Telstra's biggest market, the two products had differentiated Telstra's cloud offering to such an extent that it was now able to move into other markets, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.