Asia Commercial Bank, a Vietnamese banking group, has commenced the project to design and build a new data center in Ho Chi Minh City, the financial company's home base. The bank has partnered with IBM on the US$2m endeavor, reports Saigon Daily.

Dubbed "Enterprise Modular Datacenter", the facility is going up in a neighborhood called Quang Trung Software City, a technology park, established following a push by the Vietnam government to develop the country's software industry in the early 2000s.

The future data center's purpose is to standardize the banking group's expanding IT infrastructure. It will be designed and built jointly by IBM and Vietnam's Asia Information and Communications Technology Company.

Saigon Daily quoted ACB vice chairman Le Vu Ky as saying, "We believe that advanced technology, expertise and experience from IBM as well as AICT will be a key factor to the success of the ACB long-term development strategy."

The banking group's current total asset value is about US$10m. ABC is aiming to become one of the country's top financial institutions by 2015, a year by which it expects to quadruple the total value of its assets.

Ky said the group plans to triple the current amount of outlets (300) over the next five years and have 5-7 times the amount of customers it currently has.