IBM has announced the opening of a new datacenter in Norway. Located in Fetsund, 30 km outside Oslo, the facility is the 12th IBM datacenter in Europe and the first cloud datacenter in the region. Big Blue’s objective is to provide access to IBM’s cloud infrastructure as well as to IBM Bluemix – IBM’s Cloud innovation platform -, Watson, analytics capabilities and key areas services such as Blockchain, Internet Of Things and Big Data to customers in Northern Europe. The datacenter offers the full range of IBM Cloud infrastructure services, including bare metal and virtual servers, storage, security services, and networking. All of those services being deployed on demand with full remote access and management. Also, the facility connects to all IBM’s public data centers on the continent and around the world for convenient data replication.

“We are committed to providing global and local clients the fastest and easiest on-ramp to the IBM Cloud to accelerate their digital transformation,” said Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president of IBM Cloud, in a statement. “This investment will provide Nordic customers, especially those in regulated industries, with more flexibility to manage and gain insight into data within the region.”

Many clients in the Nordics, are already using IBM Cloud services. For example, last year, EVRY, a Nordic IT services company signed a $1 billion 10-year partnership with IBM making it its primary cloud infrastructure services provider. KONE, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of elevators and escalators is working with IBM Cloud to connect its global maintenance operations of more than one million elevators, escalators and building doors to cloud-based services.

“We enable our partners and clients to keep their data securely within the country, while being able to leverage existing IT investments, which is a key differentiator for IBM,” said Arne Norheim, CEO of IBM Norway. “Local access to IBM’s global network of public cloud data centers provides the ideal flexibility for our customers. The new cloud data center is designed to fuel support for innovation and quick adoption of new solutions that will help improve business efficiency.”

This facility is the 48th IBM datacenter. The 47th was launched less than a month ago in South Korea more exactly in Pangyo, outside of Seoul. This other datacenter was the result of a partnership with SK Holdings, a Korean IT services company and the company’s 9th cloud data center in Asia Pacific.