Japanese Managed Hosting Provider DataHotel Teams Up with IBM's SoftLayer on Cloud Infrastructure

Japanese MSP DataHotel Co., Ltd., which specializes in offering managed hosting for mobile and smartphone application developers, has chosen IBM’s SoftLayer company as its cloud infrastructure provider. The move will enable DataHotel to offer its DATAHOTEL for App overseas in a major expansion for the company.

DATAHOTEL for App is the company’s flagship service, and handles management of IT infrastructure for gaming and smartphone application developers. By turning over infrastructure management to a trusted service provider, developers are free to focus on their core initiatives instead of worrying about IT maintenance.

Bare metal servers from SoftLayer will enable DataHotel to support complex customer frameworks more extensively than with virtual machines. SoftLayer cloud services, a key part of IBM’s ramped up cloud initiative, also let DataHotel maintain security and performance as the company expands globally.

“DataHotel's use of the IBM SoftLayer cloud is a powerful example of how transformative cloud computing can be,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer, an IBM company. “By simply moving its IT environment onto IBM SoftLayer cloud infrastructure, DataHotel eliminated the cost, complexity and logistical constraints that it otherwise would have faced in deploying a traditional IT environment to support its global expansion.”??

The APAC region has played a key role in IBM’s cloud initiative, with the company announcing a number of key partnerships over the last couple of months. IBM is working with carrier 21 Vianet Group to bring private cloud infrastructure services and managed cloud services to China, and also announced a cloud partnership with ENN Energy, a top energy distributor in China. IBM managed to nearly double their IaaS/PaaS revenues from 2012 to 2013 based on massive global expansion with key deals in Europe and Brazil as well as its APAC investments. The company believes it will be bringing in $7 billion in annual cloud revenues by 2015. (Current market leader Amazon Web Services brought in just over $3 billion last year, in comparison.)

DataHotel will be taking advantage of IBM SoftLayer services, which are available in 40 data centers spread across 15 countries and five continents. The company hopes to roll out its managed services in those regions by the end of 2015, including significant expansion in the U.S. and Singapore.