SoftLayer doubles its bit barns in large, climatically-extreme, resource-rich nations

More clues: English-speaking, Commonwealth members, play weird sports ...

What is it with IBM and large Commonwealth countries with extreme climates and a big mining industry? Big Blue's SoftLayer cloud outfit has decided two such nations – Australia and Canada – both deserve their second bit barns.

The Reg has a few more regulars under the maple leaf than the southern cross, so let's go north of the 49th parallel to start and bring you news that Montreal is the site of Canada's second SoftLayer site. The Montreal site joins Toronto on SoftLayer's list of sites.

In Australia, Sydney's scored the new centre. SoftLayer launched in Melbourne last year.

The Melbourne bit barn lived in a Digital Realty facility. IBM's not saying who got the job of hosting these new centres, but as Digital Realty has facilities in Sydney, but not Montreal. So just where SoftLayer's servers sleep is not immediately apparent. Nor do we know how big these facilities are.

IBM says both offer “the full-range of SoftLayer and IBM Cloud infrastructure services” so let's assume they're substantial, shall we? And also assume that SoftLayer customers can now enjoy low-latency access to data, while also being able to replicate their information between two cloudy closets without bumping up against data sovereignty issues. That's a big deal for lots of IBM clients, who often hail from the public sector.

IBM's tossed in canned quotes from cooler companies - think gaming startups - into the formal announcements of the two new bit barns®