IBM division SoftLayer opened a second data centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands saying the double capacity in the region and improve data redundancy and disaster recovery within Europe.

James Comfort, IBM General Manager of Cloud Services, said: "We’re reaching customers in a way that takes all the guess work out of moving to the cloud. They can build and scale applications, run the toughest big data workloads, have the level of security they need, all in country and connected to a truly global platform."

Louis Rustenhoven, director Marketing & Sales at Dutch mobile operator KPN Business Market, said: "Our partnership with SoftLayer mean our end users will be able to take advantage of cloud services that meet their in-country data residency requirements."

IBM Cloud operates SoftLayer facilities in North and South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe.