To meet what it describes as growing demand for cloud services in Asia-Pacific, Google has announced plans to bring new Google Cloud regions to Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand. This is addition to similar plans for Berlin, Dammam, Doha, Mexico, Tel Aviv and Turin announced in July.
Google Cloud infrastructure services are available in locations across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. These locations are divided into regions and zones. Customers can choose where to locate their applications to meet their latency, availability and durability requirements.
When these new regions launch – though there seems to be no specific date for this yet – they will join Google’s 34 cloud regions currently in operation around the world, 11 of which are located in Asia-Pacific. The services will be running on what Google calls the ‘cleanest cloud’ in the industry.
Google says it continues to invest in expanding connectivity throughout the region by working with partners in the telecommunications industry to establish subsea cables — including Apricot, Echo, JGA South, INDIGO and Topaz — and points of presence in major cities.
As the Data Centre Dynamics website points out, Google is the first US cloud provider to announce a region in Thailand. Chinese players, including Alibaba and Tencent, already have a presence in the country. Microsoft announced plans for a Malaysian cloud region in April 2021.
Google says digital tools offered by cloud computing are fuelling transformation around the world, including in Asia-Pacific. In fact, it points out, analyst company IDC expects that total spending on cloud services in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) will reach US$282 billion by 2025.
