Internet and telecoms giant Softbank Corp will reportedly spend about $350 million to start operations next year at a new data center in southwestern Japan, according to the Nikkei business daily.
Softbank plans to begin operations at a facility at the data centre in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, in October 2008, and will build two additional facilities, each with a floor space of 3,500 square meters, by early 2009.
The data center will eventually house more than 100,000 computer servers and have an area of 140,000 square meters, making it roughly the size of three Tokyo Dome stadiums and one of Japan's largest data centers, the Nikkei said.
The company is yet to publicly comment on reports.
Japanese corporations are increasingly looking to outsource management of their data to improve productivity. The trend is being pushed along by the planned introduction in fiscal 2008 of tougher internal controls regulations that will boost the amount of data that needs to be managed, the newspaper said.
Electronics conglomerates Fujitsu Ltd and Hitachi Ltd are also investing in data centers to tap growing demand for outsourcing by Japanese corporations of management and maintenance of their information systems, the newspaper said.