Lenovo Group and the Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited (Cyberport) have entered into a collaboration to establish the region’s first cloud service and product development center, as reported by Laura Luo on DatacenterDynamic’s Chinese website.

Paul Chow, chairman of Cyberport and Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Under the agreement, the two parties will cooperate in a number of areas, including research and development (R&D), personnel training and employment, cloud computing, assisting start-ups, big data, and Internet industry development.

Cyberport runs a sprawling business campus of the same name that is designed to serve as a giant incubator to help develop start-ups, as well as firms involved in the digital or tech field. Run as a private business that is fully owned by the Hong Kong SAR Government, Cyberport encompasses a million square feet of office space that located a stone’s throw away from central Hong Kong.

Big Data in Lenovo cloud

The plan calls for the establishment of a Lenovo cloud service and development center in Cyberport that will focus on developing big data capabilities as well as an enterprise-class cloud services infrastructure platform. In addition, the center will also study ways to leverage the advantages of Hong Kong to better serve the Asia Pacific data center market.

It is understood that the Hong Kong Lenovo cloud services and product development center will go operational in April this year, and will initially be staffed with about 50 people that could be increased to 100 people in the future.

According to the report, Hong Kong was chosen for its strong international appeal, and where the establishing of a research and development center in the territory would also makes it easier to attract foreign talent.

Lenovo has continued to expand aggressively, and bought IBM’s x86 server business (pictured) in 2014.