IBM invests $300 million in disaster recovery.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT - International Business Machines Corp - Brief article

IBM announced it will spend $300 million to build 13 "cloud-computing" data centers where businesses can store information for quick retrieval in case their computer systems are destroyed in a disaster.

The computing giant's plans include building sites in 10 countries, including China, Japan, Turkey, Poland, France, and the United States.

IBM has so far rolled out the cloud-computing data recovery technology to fewer than five of its 154 existing data centers, the oldest of which was built more than 40 years ago. The technology encrypts data on computers, automatically sending it to IBM's cloud-computing center over the Internet.

If a customer's computer breaks down or a data center is destroyed, lost data can be restored via the web in two to six hours, IBM...