In an effort to address the growing demand for internet, as well as meeting government regulations, Microsoft has opened a new data centre in China, its fifth on the Chinese mainland.
According to a report in Global Times, the new facility, located in the North China’s Hebei Province, was officially put into operation on Thursday, the company announced via its WeChat account. Interestingly, this comes a few days after Microsoft announced the launch of a new cloud region in India.
Unrestricted access
The new data centre will gain unrestricted access to customers and doubles the capacity of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud portfolio, it said, adding that Microsoft Azure is the first international public cloud service to become widely available in China, the Global Times report said. Including Azure, all of Microsoft’s four cloud platforms, the other three being Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform, have been launched in China.
China’s has become the fastest growing public cloud market in the world, and its market share in the global market might increase to more than 10.5 percent by 2024, according to a research report by IDC. “We see fast-growing needs for global public services in the China market, both from multinationals thronging to China, man Chinese companies seeking for global presence, and Chinese companies to digitally transform their businesses and processes on clouds,” said Hou Yang, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, according to a recent public statement issued by Microsoft.
Microsoft is also establishing cloud data centres in China at a time when regulators have moved to tighten data security supervision. For example, Guangdong Province will ramp up efforts on data regulation by exploring the establishment of a “Data Customs” unit to review cross-border data flow and create a big data centre in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Recently, China has approved plans to build four mega clusters of data centres in the country’s north and west with the aim of supporting the data needs of Beijing and major coastal centres.
Also, On February 17, China’s NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), the country’s top state planner and other departments officially launched the “east-to-west computing resource transfer project,” involving the construction of eight national computing hubs as well as 10 national-data centre clusters. The project aims to efficiently direct computing demand from the east to the west of the country.
Since the last few months, other tech giants have moved to construct data centers in China. In May 2021, Apple’s first mainland data centre began operation, while Tesla also completed construction of a data centre in Shanghai last October.
Want to know more about current hot topics in the industry? The 2nd edition of NEA Digital Week is back this June! This time, with a huge focus on Cloud and Datacenter key trends and technology within North East Asia.
-> See our agenda and register for your preferred regions:
Hong Kong (Onsite & Digital) 1st June 2022
Japan (Digital) 2nd June 2022
