IBM Announces the European Multizone Cloud Region at CAM

IBM announced the opening of the first Multizone Cloud Region in Spain during IBM Think this morning in Madrid. This region is designed to support the transformation and adoption journeys of the hybrid cloud and Artificial Intelligence model of Spanish and European companies.

The inauguration of the Multizone Cloud Region, which represents IBM‘s largest investment in Spain and one of the largest in Europe, as it consists of three datacenters, located in Alcobendas, Las Rozas, and Madrid capital, which will begin operating today in synchronisation.

Service to European customers

With this structure, the Multizone Cloud Region will enable European customers to deploy their mission-critical workloads with high standards of resilience, performance, security, and compliance, helping companies to meet the European Union’s regulatory and digital sovereignty requirements. In fact, it will host more than 600 customers in Europe, including a number of Spanish companies in highly regulated industries.

Horacio Morrel, president of IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Israel, said: “With the opening of our Multizone Cloud Region, IBM is accelerating the digital transformation of Spanish and European enterprises by offering advanced hybrid cloud capabilities. Innovation is part of our DNA at IBM, and we are committed to continue driving business innovation and positioning Spain as a leader in the digital landscape in Europe”.

Sustainability

The inauguration of the Multizone Cloud Region located in the Community of Madrid comes at a key moment marked by technologies such as generative Artificial Intelligence and hybrid cloud that are revolutionising the way organisations operate. Technologies that must be implemented with a focus on resilience, security, and regulatory compliance, while helping companies meet their sustainability goals.

Moreover, because this region is powered by 100% renewable energy, the Madrid Multizone Cloud Region can help customers advance their sustainability goals. In fact, customers will be able to employ IBM Cloud, which allows them to monitor their sustainability progress with tools such as IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, an AI-based dashboard that allows customers to track their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their various workloads and cloud services.

MZR for highly regulated environments

MZR enables improved resiliency, can allow customers to continuously run mission-critical workloads, and provides access to security features, especially critical for regulated industries such as financial services, government, and telecommunications.

IBM MZRs are aligned with IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy from Red Hat OpenShift to help clients implement portable architectures for mission-critical applications, and facilitate the training of foundational AI models on data in on-premises or cloud environments.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services, a cloud designed for the financial industry, enables clients hosted in the Madrid Cloud Region to accelerate cloud adoption while working to reduce risk. In addition, this service also includes IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services, a set of security and compliance controls built into the platform that enable financial institutions to confidently host mission-critical applications and workloads while addressing potential systemic industry risks throughout the supply chain.

Availability

The IBM Multizone Cloud Region in Madrid is IBM’s third largest in Europe, after Paris and Frankfurt, with three data centres, located in Alcobendas, Las Rozas, and the city of Madrid. This structure constitutes an availability zone, which, in coordination with the others and with autonomous operation, makes it possible to offer cloud services with greater resilience.

The announcement of the inauguration of this region is in addition to the recent announcement of the creation of a Quantum Computing Centre in the Basque Country and the “Future of Computing” initiative, in collaboration with the Barcelona SuperComputing Center, demonstrating IBM’s strategy to continue investing in cutting-edge technologies to promote and position Spain as a driver of digital and technological transformation in southern Europe.