Google Cloud Platform Expands In Asia With New Japan Data Centres

Google Cloud Platform (CGP) has completed the latest stage of its worldwide expansion with the opening of a new region in Tokyo, Japan.

The company says the new data centres will boost the performance of the platform for its Asian customers and lower latency.

The new Asia-Northeast region complements an existing region in Taiwan and there are plans for new locations in Singapore, Sydney and Mumbai in 2017. The Tokyo region will offer compute, database and data analytics services.

Read More: How Google Cloud helped Pokemon Go cope with massive demand

Google Cloud in Japan

Google is also an investor in the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), the world’s highest capacity transpacific connection to date and links Los Angeles and Hong Kong, as well as FASTER – a cable serving Japan and the US.

“By opening a dedicated cloud region in Tokyo, we’re bringing Google’s compute, storage and networking services directly to Japanese businesses,” said Varunk Salkalkar and Dave Stiver, product managers for GCP. “Based on our testing, customers in cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo and Nagoya experience 50-85 percent lower latency on average when served from the Tokyo region compared to Taiwan.

“In the last few years, GCP has grown to serve a diverse set of customers from mobile gaming studios to traditional enterprises, all of whom depend on our cloud regions and network to reach their customers across Asia and beyond. We look forward to welcoming businesses to the Tokyo region and are excited to see what they build with our platform.”

GCP is Google’s answer to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its customers include the likes of online supermarket Ocado, music streaming service Spotify and Pokemon Go developer Niantic Labs.

Outside of Asia, it plans new regions in Northern Virginia, São Paulo, London, Finland and Frankfurt, with more planned for next year.

Google Cloud Platform sits behind both Azure and AWS in terms of revenue so it will hope the fresh brand and new features will help close the gap. However it was reported last month that Google was close to winning a big contract with PayPal, beating its two larger rivals to the punch.

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