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Google to open new cloud regions in India and Australia
New cloud regions in Delhi and Melbourne underscore Google’s resolve to carve out a bigger slice of Asia-Pacific’s cloud computing market
Google Cloud is pulling out all stops to expand its Asia-Pacific (APAC) footprint with new cloud regions in India and Australia slated to open later this year.
Dave Stiver, senior product manager at Google Cloud’s geographic expansion team, said the cloud supplier will launch additional cloud regions in Delhi and Melbourne – each with three zones – in a move to offer lower latency to local users. He added that Delhi and Melbourne are also the second regions in their respective markets, enabling in-country disaster recovery for mission critical applications.
In India, Google Cloud is being used by organisations in industries such as commerce, healthcare and financial services, as well as the public sector.
Amarinder S Dhaliwal, chief product officer of IndiaMart, said Google Cloud already enables buyers and suppliers to access the company’s e-commerce marketplace much faster than before, improving customer engagement and the user journey. “We are extremely excited about the potential of a second Google Cloud Platform [GCP] region in India to help us provide an even better experience to the businesses that use IndiaMart,” he added.
In Australia, Google Cloud counts household names such as ANZ Bank as clients. The bank has been using GCP to analyse aggregated, anonymous datasets for customer insights.
“We aim to shape a world where people and communities thrive, and Google Cloud is key to the transformation that enables us to achieve this purpose,” said Gerard Florian, group executive for technology at ANZ Bank. “Google Cloud’s Melbourne region presents opportunities to further enhance a cloud-based technology environment that incorporates integrated governance controls and service management, as well as consistent security controls,” he added.
Tim Sheedy, principal advisor at Ecosystm, a technology research firm, told Computer Weekly that Google is “doing a good job in pitching its cloud as the more secure environment”. It has also “made a strong play” in the cloud storage and analytics space – and is going after the ‘data’ space using its machine learning tools and assets, he added.
Read more about cloud in APAC
- Edge computing, the internet of things and contact centre services are some of the key growth areas for Amazon Web Services in Australia.
- Oracle’s Generation 2 cloud region in Sydney will be delivered from a new datacentre to meet demand for Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and autonomous database services in Australia.
- Microsoft and Indian telecoms giant Jio will deliver cloud infrastructure services through two new datacentres being built in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
- French cloud infrastructure supplier OVHcloud is investing more in India over the next few quarters as part of its regional expansion plan.
According to GlobalData, the APAC cloud computing market is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19% from 2018 to 2023, accounting for nearly 30% of the global market, behind only North America, which is estimated to have a market share of 33%.
Sunil Kumar Verma, lead ICT analyst at GlobalData, said: “Cloud computing continues to fuel the growth of enterprises, supporting a wide range of use-cases such as adoption of emerging technologies, enhanced automation and agility capabilities, enhanced digital customer experience, IT infrastructure services scalability and accessibility requirements; and enhanced data accessibility and process capabilities”.
China and Japan, the two largest countries in terms of cloud computing revenue opportunity, are expected to account for 60% of the overall growth in the region, while Australia and New Zealand will also see high growth rates during the forecast period, according to GlobalData.
