Google steps up competition with Amazon, expands Cloud Platform to Asia

Google steps up competition with Amazon, expands Cloud Platform to Asia 
by Mikael Ricknas

The company increases its Asian presence again after recently opening two data centers Google has expanded its Cloud Platform to include locally hosted computing capacity, storage and data bases for the Asia-Pacific region.
The launch is in line with Google's increasing investment in the region, the company said in a blog post. It comes following the opening of data centers in Taiwan and Singapore at the end of last year. The launch includes infrastructure-as-a-service platform Compute Engine, Cloud Storage and Cloud SQL services. The standard Compute Engine instances cost from US$0.077 per hour, which is the same as in Europe but slightly more than in the U.S. Using more closely located data centers to host applications performance should improve performance for local businesses and organizations, as well as multinationals. In addition to local hosting, the Google Cloud Platform website and developer console will be available in Japanese and traditional Chinese. The websites are being updated with with use cases, documentation and all sorts tools to help local developers get started, according to Google. To drum up interest and explain why Asian companies should pick its platform over competing alternatives, Google is organizing the Cloud Platform Global Roadshow. It will stop in Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul or Hong Kong, the company said.
This year has seen the competition between public cloud providers continue unabated, with recent price cuts and service upgrades. Google's Asian expansion will help it compete with Amazon and Microsoft, which already host services in the region.
 
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