IBM has confirmed it plans to start offering cloud computing services, which will be housed in a £180m datacentre it is building in North Carolina.

The new facility will also be the testbed for IBM's green datacentre plans, and will be the first one to incorporate its state-of-the-art design principles aimed at making IT more energy efficient.

"This new datacentre is part of IBM's commitment to construct the world's most advanced datacentres," said Bob Greenberg, general manager of IT optimization, in a statement. "We open for business in late 2009."

The new facility will replace existing buildings on IBM's Research Triangle Park site in North Carolina with a 60,000 datacentre, packed with energy-efficient kit and designed to allow additional modules to be built on.

The building will use a mixture of air-, water- and fresh-air-cooling to ensure an optimum operating temperature, delivered in the most energy-efficient manner.

IBM has yet to confirm what services it will offer from the facility.