IBM and the City of Berlin Accelerate Local Innovation on the IBM Cloud with techberlin.com

ARMONK, N.Y. and BERLIN, May 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --Together with the Berlin Startup Unit of City of Berlin, a range of other local civic organizations and the local community partner Openers, IBM (NYSE: IBM) introduced techberlin.com on the IBM Cloud today.

techberlin.com is a new online hub for Berlin's developers, startups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and technology enthusiast to meet, establish new connections, learn about new opportunities and create new partnerships that will accelerate innovation and stimulate local economic activity.

The site is an interactive platform that provides a central location for visitors to learn about new job opportunities; read about local tech news; sign up for tech-focused events, classes and meet-ups; and navigate the city with a digital map that lists open office locations, workspaces and more. The City of Berlin provided content and additional resources for building the hub, and will use it to as its main platform for communicating with entrepreneurs. techberlin.com will also offer a comprehensive search portal with a database and profile of Berlin-based tech companies and investors; a city-wide tech event calendar; continuous updates of technology-related jobs in the city; and a dedicated section for breaking news stories.

"Every 20 hours a new internet company is being found in Berlin," said Guido Beermann, Permanent Secretary in Berlin's Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research. "The digital economy in the capital accounts for every eight new job, with no signs of slowing down.  Whether it is jobs, venture capital, networking or operational support - `techberlin.com´ is an excellent opportunity for everyone interested in founding a startup in the German capital to find all of Berlin´s available resources of the tech and digital ecosystem at one spot."

techberlin.com is hosted on IBM SoftLayer cloud infrastructure and will be updated regularly using tools from Bluemix. Bluemix is a platform that combines over 100 cloud based development services from IBM and its partner ecosystem – including tools for social, mobile, analytics, cloud integration, Internet of Things, and more – for developers to use in creating their applications. Built on open standards, the platform makes it easier for developers to integrate cloud applications with each other and with on-premise workloads to create hybrid deployments and is in fact the largest deployment of Cloud Foundry in the world.

Through its support of the site, IBM will offer up to $120,000 of free cloud credit for local qualified startups to use as they build their business on the IBM Cloud. It will also develop content with advice for startups on how to use social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies to build their business; while local IBM customers will use it as a forum to share advice and make connections. Combining these offers with the cloud center that IBM launched in Frankfurt will make it easier for startups to build their business locally before scaling globally across IBM's network of more than 40 cloud centers worldwide as they grow.

IBM total cloud revenue --- covering public, private and hybrid engagements ---was $7.7 billion over the previous 12 months at the end of March 2015; it grew more than 60 percent in first quarter 2015. IBM's cloud delivered as a service business, a subset of the total, includes SoftLayer's infrastructure offerings.

About the Berlin Startup Unit
The state of Berlin initiated the Berlin Startup Unit together with partners from business, science and the startup scene. The unit is based in the premises of Berlin Partner for Business and Technology. Seven initiatives work together to continue developing the startup capital of Berlin. Each of the initiatives are coordinated by a tandem made up of an institution and a founder. Initiators of the Berlin Startup Unit are: the state of Berlin, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, IHK Berlin and IBB Investitionsbank Berlin. The goal of the Berlin Startup Unit is to increase the transparency of public services and continue to develop them for startups. More information can be found at www.berlin-partner.de/berlin-startup-unit

Media Contact:
Nick Smith
IBM Communications
nssmith@us.ibm.com
212-671-9653

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SOURCE IBM

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