IBM announced this week it is investing $300 million to construct 13 "Business Resilience" service delivery centers in 10 countries in 2008, increasing its ability to address surging demand from businesses and governments from around the world seeking to keep their operations safe from disruption. The massive infrastructure expansion is the largest of its kind and will permit IBM clients to access services that support business continuity for the first time from a cloud computing environment.

Business continuity and resiliency services help ensure uninterrupted operations across all layers of the business, as well as helping businesses avoid, prepare, and recover from a disruption. IBM is the world's leader in providing services that help avoid disruption and enable business continuity.

Future Business Resilience service delivery centers will be located in every geographic region of the globe, with sites including Hong Kong; Tokyo, Japan; Paris, France; London, UK; Beijing and Shanghai, China; Izmir, Turkey; Warsaw, Poland; Milan, Italy; Metro Park, New Jersey; Cologne, Germany; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Mumbai, India; South Africa; and Brussels, Belgium. The centers are specifically designed to help clients maintain business operations under virtually any condition, comply with industry and government regulations, and recover rapidly from disasters.

"Enterprise Rent-A-Car is in the business of providing exceptional customer service and that is how we differentiate ourselves," said Richard Bozada, department manager of Business Continuity, Enterprise Rent-A-Car. "To that extent, IBM helps us achieve our business goals by creating a highly resilient environment that is anchored by a world class IBM service delivery team. Through IBM's Business Resilience Centers we are able to address and minimize multiple points of business and event-driven risk. Today's commitment further validates the strategic approach we've taken to key aspects of our IT operations."

IBM is also accelerating the build-out of its Information Protection Services business to deliver cloud-based computing services to support business continuity. Services from IBM Information Protection Services combine IBM hardware with storage management software in a fully configured, rack-mounted storage appliance, known as a data protection "vault" that is capable of storing multi-terabytes of information and applications data. The vaults are integrated with technology gained via IBM's acquisition of Arsenal Digital Solutions in 2008. The patent-pending on-demand service delivery platform enables global scalability of information protection services and rapid time-to-protection of customer data.

Using the service delivery platform, clients will be able to take advantage of cloud computing capabilities by storing their business data in IBM's data protection vaults that will be based in IBM's global business resiliency centers. Once the information is protected, customers will be able to immediately recover that information by restoring and retrieving it from a center directly to the client's business or to an alternative worksite recovery area in the event of a disaster.

The acquisition of Arsenal and the accelerated deployment of its data protection vaults globally will help IBM offer clients sophisticated remote data management and business continuity capabilities, like storing, replicating and recovering key data and business applications through an IBM business resiliency center.

"Today, IBM, the global leader of business continuity and resiliency, makes a historic investment and commitment to clients for whom continuous and resilient business operations are an imperative," said Philippe Jarre, general manager of IBM Global Business Continuity and Resiliency Services. "Whether it be via acquisitions, expansion of our consulting services, or the opening of new service delivery centers, IBM is committed to helping clients achieve the levels of business continuity necessary to meet the triple threat of data protection, security, and compliance head-on."

With 40 years of global experience in the business continuity arena and more than 150 business resilience delivery centers worldwide, IBM has deep industry-specific knowledge and a portfolio of unmatched services that help companies avoid disruption and keep their operations online.