IBM Wednesday opened four new cloud computing centers in emerging markets. They’re in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bangalore, India; Seoul, Korea; and Hanoi, Vietnam.

That brings the number of IBM cloud centers worldwide to 13. The company brags that it’s got “the world’s largest network of expertise on cloud computing.”

IBM argues that extreme data overload, skyrocketing energy costs, increasingly complex regulatory requirements and competition from nimbler economies are pushing customers into cloud computing.

In Vietnam, it expects universities, government ministries and telecommunication vendors to use the service. In Korea, it’s banking, telecommunications, government, education and IT hosting services. In India, it’s mid-market vendors, universities, telecom companies and government bodies and in Brazil it’s supposed to be used for a massive collaboration program.

The Association for Promotion of Brazilian Software Excellence (SOFTEX) is supposed to use the cloud to collect ideas for Brazil’s 2009-2010 strategic plan for its local software industry. IBM’s Web 2.0 Idea Factory cloud platform will allow participation from any device at any time. The 22 agencies and 1,500 ISVs that are members of SOFTEX will contribute ideas during a 72-hour event in early November.

IBM has dedicated more than 200 full-time researchers and announced a $100 million investment in cloud computing.

Earlier this year it established Europe’s first Cloud Computing Center in Dublin; a center in Beijing; one in Johannesburg; one in Tokyo; and one in Raleigh, North Carolina.