Yahoo Japan Buys Data Centers for Cloud Push

Yahoo Japan Corp. will pay $478 million (45 billion yen) to acquire Softbank IDC Solutions Corp., which operates nine data centers in Japan, including several supporting Yahoo Japan's operations. Yahoo Japan cited growing demand for data center services, the rising volume of data and video content, and the need for additional infrastructure to support a planned push into cloud computing.

"Yahoo Japan is considering full-fledged entry into cloud computing and open platforms including SaaS which are expanding worldwide in the next generation Internet business domain (and) sees the need to establish a strategic base for the data center business," the company said in a statement.

Yahoo Japan Corp. is a joint venture between Yahoo! Inc. and Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate that owns 105 businesses. Yahoo Japan is the largest Internet portal in Japan, with 43 billion monthly page views in January 2009.

IDC Solutions is also a subsidiary of Softbank, and one of  the largest data center companies in Japan with 9 data centers nationwide. Last October the company opened a data center complex in Kita-Kyushu city, Fukuoka Prefecture featuring the latest energy efficiency technologies.

Yahoo Japan said last month that it has adopted the next-generation Nexus 7000 switch from Cisco Systems (CSCO) in its new data center, which can accommodate up to 1,000 server racks.