IBM announced on Thursday that its newest SmartCloud data center in Europe will be located in Ehningen, Germany.

The company will use the facility to provide public, private and hybrid cloud services to enterprise customers. These services will include tooks like online meetings, email, calendaring and instant messaging, among others.

A major push with this project is social networking for business. Platforms available through the data center will include capabilities for collaboration across multiple companies, while meeting necessary privacy requirements.

Alistair Rennie, general manager of social business at IBM, said adoption of cloud-based “social business” was soaring. “With the new European data center we expand our industry-leading social business footprint, strengthening our ability to meet the needs for businesses seeking security-rich, flexible cloud environments that let them unleash innovation and drive a smarter enterprise,” he said.

The company's other data centers supporting its cloud-basd social-business services are located in North America and Asia Pacific.