Cloud giant
IBM - traditionally known as ‘Big Blue’ - has formed a partnership with Chinese consortium Wanda Group. The two organizations will collaborate on cloud activity that will make IBM Cloud services available in China.
With headquarters in Beijing, China, the Wanda Group is one of China’s largest businesses. Also known as ‘Wàndá Jítuán’ or ‘Dalian Wanda’, the group is best known as China’s largest property developer and has operations that include the development of department stores, luxury hotels and other commercial properties. It also includes the Wanda Internet Technology Group.
Together IBM and Wanda will establish ‘Wanda Cloud Company’ which will start operations in 2018. The relationship will see Wanda Cloud Company license IBM technologies at data centers it owns in China. The services provided from the centers will target business customers by offering “access to select IBM cloud Infrastructure and Platform-as-a-Service (IaaS and PaaS) technologies”.
While no financial data was provided relating to the partnership, it was announced the companies would share the revenue the new business generates. Wanda will be responsible for ensuring all services provided meet all local compliance requirements.
IBM also suggested in a press release on the company site, “IBM will introduce Watson services to China through this new partnership, starting with Watson Conversation services, which allows developers to add natural language interactions between apps and customers”. IBM will introduce additional Watson services as the partnership progresses.
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