Microsoft has announced plans to establish a data centre region in Malaysia. The country’s first Azure region will be located in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area. It will deliver access to the full Microsoft Cloud, as well as Azure Availability Zones, and support Microsoft’s sustainability goals. Microsoft announced plans to establish its first datacenter region in Malaysia, as part of “Bersama Malaysia” initiative to support inclusive economic growth. “Bersama Malaysia” includes a commitment to skill an additional 1 million Malaysians by end of 2023, collaboration across public and private sectors, and formation of a MyDigital Alliance Leadership Council.
This is a great news and what does this mean to your business?
Data & Application Will Be Closer to You
Microsoft Azure Cloud is a globally renowned hyper-scaler cloud. It has more than 600 cloud services and supports varied operating systems, databases, and developer tools. By having the public cloud closer to your customers and team members, you have better cloud experience due to lower latency and cheaper connectivity cost. Some of these use cases would be on operating time sensitive machines at manufacturing production floor. These would also include better retail experiences.
Regulation & Compliance Are Met for Data Sovereignty
Several industries such as financial industries, government sectors and defence technologies ecosystems require the data to be in the country. While the workload varies from the organization size, these industries and sectors would definitely benefit from large ready services and tools. Moreover, Azure has over 90 compliance certifications, including over 50 specified to global regions and countries, such as the US, the European Union, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, India, and China. Plus, more than 35 compliance offerings specific to the needs of key industries, including health, government, finance, education, manufacturing, and media.
Hybrid Cloud’s Experience Will Be Enhanced
Microsoft has one of the most extensive hybrid cloud solutions, such as Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI (Hyper Converged Infrastructure), and Azure Stack Edge. With Azure located in the country, you can have various deployment scenarios. For example, you can have Azure Stack HCI on the branches and then sync to Azure. Azure Stack HCI 20H2 has now also been integrated in Azure. You can see the server host and deploy from public cloud as well.
Sustainable Cloud Computing Will be Emulated
At Azure, Microsoft see sustainability and humanity’s response to climate change as one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime. A 2018 study found that using Microsoft Azure cloud platform can be up to 93 percent more energy efficient, and up to 98 percent more carbon efficient, than on-premises solutions. By 2025, they are committed at 100% renewable energy to be used for cloud computing. This will propel further innovation and sustainability challenges to other existing data centres. Large cloud data centres consume massive electricity. In order to generate such amount of electricity, often time dirty coals may be used. In Malaysia, 35.3% electricity is generated from coal.
Final thought on Azure Region Malaysia
We are excited for Microsoft’s vision in the country, empowering the nation #BersamaMalaysia. More people would have the access and be equipped in this initiative. At Cloudify.Asia, we are excited to be Microsoft’s esteemed partner.
Written by Gavin Loh (Chief Opportunity Creator)