Salesforce.com Taps NTT for Tokyo Data Center

Enterprise SaaS specialist Salesforce.com (CRM) will expand its operations in Japan with a new data center in an NTT America facility in Tokyo, the two companies said today. The Tokyo facility will help support Salesforce.com’s growing customer base in Japan once it is completed in 2011.

“Salesforce.com has seen explosive growth in Japan," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com. "NTT Com has been a trusted partner for many years, and we look forward to expanding our relationship with them on the new data center to support continued customer success in the region."

Japan’s cloud service market is expected to grow to around 2.4 billion yen by 2015, according to a Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications report. The company opened its Singapore data center last year, hoping to use the regional presence to build Salesforce.com’s business in Asia, where it has about 5,000 customers. But in May the company announced plans to add a Tokyo data center, believing it may help the company build its business with Japanese firms needing to store their data within that nation’s borders.

Salesforce.com (CRM) runs most of its operations from Equinix data centers in Silicon Valley, Virginia and Singapore. Equinix (EQIX) also has two data centers in Tokyo.

“I am delighted that salesforce.com has chosen NTT Com as their data center partner in Japan based on their recognition of our proven data center operations in some 100 locations worldwide, and our ability to provide top-level architecture, equipment and security,” said Shinobu Umino, senior executive vice president, NTT Com. “We have established a trusted relationship through our offering of Salesforce over VPN, and now we look forward to salesforce.com using our top-quality data center services to provide highly reliable cloud services.”