IBM bet big on cloud this year, and according to the company, it’s a bet that paid out. Big Blue has a planned investment of more than $1 billion in cloud, and as part of that investment, the company announced last January that it would scale out the number of cloud data centers it has globally. IBM now has 48 cloud centers.

Big Blue had intended to increase its number to at least 40 data centers this year, and it finally scooted past that number last week when it announced the opening of 12 new data center locations, including its own IBM Cloud centers in Frankfurt, Mexico City and Tokyo, and nine more centers that came about through strategic partnerships in Australia, France, Japan, Singapore, The Netherlands and in regions in the U.S.

“IBM recognizes that businesses and governments need the cloud to help them innovate, grow and operate more efficiently in concert with their existing IT investments,” said Jim Comfort, general manager of IBM Cloud Services, in a prepared statement.

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“Everything IBM does is designed to help companies transition to the cloud in a responsible way at a pace that best fits their business model and industry,” he said. “Just as we helped major organizations transform in each preceding era of IT, IBM now serves as the cloud platform for the enterprise.”

IBM certainly has had its big wins in the last couple of years, but it has always trailed behind Amazon Web Services. Big Blue executives tell a somewhat different story, claiming leadership in several areas of cloud computing.

Although its claimed leadership can be argued, IBM is one of the top of cloud providers on the planet at this point, and it is laying the foundation to gain ground on its Amazon and its other biggest competitors. For instance, IBM has always simplified its cloud contracts and claimed that its rivals are still using long, complex contracts that take too long for the cloud providers to get to a signed deal.

It’s likely we’ll hear more big news from IBM in the new year.