IBM has announced a new UK data centre from SoftLayer will launch later this month – with France and Germany also in the IaaS provider’s sights for this year.

The new data centre will complement SoftLayer’s existing Amsterdam offering, as well as the Point of Presence London network. The move comes just a month after Salesforce launched their own London data centre.

IBM describes London as a key cloud market, with one third of the world’s largest companies headquartered in London and some of the world’s largest financial institutions operating from there.

The London server will hold more than 15,000 physical servers and will offer the full range of SoftLayer services, from bare metal to storage and networking, with SoftLayer offering $500 for the first customers.

Speaking to CloudTech at Cloud World Forum last week, SoftLayer EMEA managing director Jonathan Wisler explained how the company was …