Google Cloud expands to Thailand, Malaysia and New Zealand

Hopes to tap expected growth as it levels up to match rivals' presences

Google Cloud has announced it will build facilities in Thailand, Malaysia, and New Zealand.

The G-Cloud already operates 11 regions in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), and with the three extra locations announced today will eventually operate 37 cloudy regions around the world.

Exact locations or cities where the cloud regions are slated to go were not detailed, but Google did reveal that the "high-performance services" would be run on "the cleanest cloud in the industry" – a title Google has given itself.

Google reckons APAC is a the place to go to tap into growth, citing IDC's prediction that total spending on cloud services in APAC – excluding Japan – will total $282 billion by 2025.

"The new Google Cloud regions will help to address organizations' increasing needs in the area of digital sovereignty and enable more opportunities for digital transformation and innovation in Asia Pacific," said IDC research director Daphne Chung in Google's announcement.

Google's enthusiasm for APAC is not unique. Amazon Web Services also plans to cash in on the market, with new cloud zones in Australia, India and Indonesia. Microsoft's Azure cloud already operates in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, China, India, Japan, and Korea, and is "soon" expanding into Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.

Alibaba Cloud operates 85 availability zones in 28 regions, and sees APAC is its most promising market. The Chinese cloud contender therefore operates 13 regions in mainland China and others in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Japan, and South Korea. Alibaba Cloud also last week launched an "in-country service" that lets its customers "localize and distribute regulated and sensitive data of Chinese citizens in China within the domestic borders of this data."

"Now when you serve customers from China, you no longer need to worry about running afloul of any compliance laws or data regulations," the cloudy contender asserts. ®