Verizon opens Hong Kong data centre

Verizon Business has announced the opening of a data centre in Hong Kong, which the company hopes will appeal to expanding Australian customers whilst it prepares the launch of cloud computing services based in Canberra in the second half of 2011.

The company - which already offers cloud computing services from its U.S. data centres - said its new Asia Pacific hub in Hong Kong will be a "gateway to China and India for multinational corporations."

Verizon announced in June a plan to co-locate racks within a data centre in Fyshwick, Canberra for the provision of storage-as-a-service.

The company has now confirmed it will offer its full suite of computing-as-a-service from the Canberra facility by mid-late 2011.

In the meantime, the company is pitching Hong Kong as an interim solution, but won't provide free migration services for those customers that wish to shift to Canberra once the local facility opens.

"The Hong Kong data centre, which is Verizon's most advanced Pacific Rim facility, is located in a highly-resilient building and connects directly to the Verizon global IP network," the company told iTnews in a written statement. 

"Use of this facility is an interim solution -- in advance of onshore CaaS offering in Canberra -- will provide APAC regional coverage and reduced latency, and geographical diverse disaster recovery solutions. 

"At this stage Verizon is not planning any CaaS node to CaaS node migrations for customers free of charge, but will have our global professional services teams available to support these migrations for customers," the company said.

Competitors such as Fujitsu and Telstra have already set live local cloud computing services.