Google Cloud expands Asia Pacific footprint

Fresh from announcing its latest US fibre push, Google has now also revealed some new cloud regions, albeit somewhat further afield.

The hyperscaler is expanding in Asia Pacific, with new facilities coming to Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand. As has become the norm, Google made proclamations about how its new regions are part of its ongoing commitment to Asia Pacific’s digital transformation. It also follows the announcement of new regions in Berlin, Dammam in Saudi Arabia, Doha, Mexico, Tel Aviv and Turin. These will add to Google’s 34-strong cloud region footprint, 11 of which are already located in Asia Pacific.

“From retail and media and entertainment to financial services and public sector, leading organisations come to Google Cloud as their trusted innovation partner,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. “The new Google Cloud regions in Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand will help our customers continue to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems. We will work with our customers to ensure the cloud region fits their evolving needs.”

Last month, Google parent Alphabet reported cloud revenue reached $6.28 billion in the second quarter, up 36 percent on last year. However, all this geographic expansion and investment in new services doesn’t come cheap, and the division notched up a hefty $858 million operating loss.

Prevailing market sentiment is on Google’s side though, with multiple analyst firms forecasting continued strong growth in cloud spending in the coming years. Gartner in April predicted global public cloud spending will reach $494.7 billion this year; meanwhile, Google itself cited an IDC report that came out in February that predicts total spending on cloud services in Asia Pacific – excluding Japan – will reach $282 billion by 2025.

It’s worth noting that IDC report covers the total cloud market, not just public cloud. In a separate report last year, IDC said public cloud services spending in Asia Pacific came in at $36.4 billion in 2020, and was expected to reach $48.4 billion at the end of 2021. More modest figures like these underscore the importance of hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google making inroads into the on-premises side of the market with their various hybrid cloud offerings.

“The new Google Cloud regions will help to address organisations’ increasing needs in the area of digital sovereignty and enable more opportunities for digital transformation and innovation in Asia Pacific,” said Daphne Chung, research director of cloud services and software research at IDC Asia Pacific.

“With this announcement, Google Cloud is providing customers with more choices in accessing capabilities from local cloud regions while aiding their journeys to hybrid and multi-cloud environments,” she added.

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