A flurry of recent announcements from Poland, Vietnam, South Africa and Thailand underlines the continuing growth of data centres and cloud services in diverse locations around the world.
Microsoft has announced plans to invest $1 billion in cloud computing in Poland. It will open a data centre region in the country, and enter into a seven-year partnership with domestic cloud provider Chmura Krajowa to help sell Azure and other Microsoft enterprise services. A large-scale training and upskilling programme is also planned.
In Vietnam, local telecommunication and internet service provider FPT Telecom has begun construction of a new data centre in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 9, a technology and business development park. It will be the country’s biggest data centre, the company says.
The new facility is expected to cover 10,000 square metres, provide enough space for around 3,600 racks and meet LEED and Uptime Tier III standards.
FPT is developing its own cloud platform, which, the company says, will allow domestic businesses to operate without the need to send data abroad. It adds that the new data centre is key to achieving the necessary infrastructural capacity to run a cloud platform.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, a major hub for data centres on the African continent, Africa Data Centres’ move to acquire the Samrand data centre, formerly used by Standard Bank, in Johannesburg, has been ratified by the country’s Competition Tribunal. Africa Data Centres has said it will open the facility to the market, on an open-access basis.
Finally, in Thailand, local news reports indicate that Thailand’s cabinet has approved close to $150 million funding to finance the deployment of a cloud service for use by government agencies.
The Government Data Centre and Cloud (GDCC) service will be used as a central cloud system to ensure the safety of government data, and will also serve as a backup in the event of disasters. The government says it expects to save significant sums from reduced spending on public cloud services. However, it is not yet clear where the service will be hosted.
