MALAYSIA will join Google’s 34 cloud regions currently operational around the world, an investment that Google Cloud said will be its most significant to date in the country.

Google Cloud managing director (Southeast Asia) Ruma Balasubramanian was unable to disclose the amount, but said the investment involved a data centre, hardware/software, as well as expertise.

“Infrastructure will be built in Malaysia. We are still in the process of searching for a location. We will share that with you as soon as we can. 

“We have announced three additional cloud regions across the Asia Pacific this week. One of them is Malaysia and the other two will be Thailand and New Zealand,” she told reporters at Malaysia’s Google cloud region announcement event today.

On the group’s decision to invest in Malaysia, she said the country had emerged from the pandemic to potentially become a digitally competitive country with eight out of 10 Malaysians now using digital services or planning to do so in the future.

Hence, digital transformation had become a strategic imperative for every business that wanted to stay competitive. She noted that Malaysia’s digital economy is set to be worth US$35 billion.

She also said Malaysia is located within a very robust Southeast Asian ecosystem and that the digital economy is expected to hit US$363 billion, and by the end of the current decade US$1 trillion.

The second key factor, and an incredibly important one for the group, was the support of government policies.

She said the third factor is that Google Cloud wanted to help Malaysia fulfil its potential to become one of the world’s most digitally competitive countries.

“Google has invested very heavily in its own Information Technology infrastructure. By offering the same level of security, scalability and reliability to enterprises, we are providing a simpler, faster, and more cost-efficient way for organisations of all sizes to achieve their desired outcomes,” she added.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz, in a video message, said cloud service providers like Google Cloud could play a significant role to accelerate the MyDigital blueprint implementation.

It had been envisaged that cloud technology would become one of the key enablers to realise the country’s digital aspirations and to transform it into a leading digital economy by 2030.

He said successful digital transformation requires cooperation from the government, the private sector, academia, and all levels of society.

The Google Cloud announcement underscores the country’s private-public sector partnership approach, which has bearings on high quality investments in digital infrastructure in the country; the country is on track to reach its target of RM70 billion by 2025, he said.

“Having announced its most significant infrastructure investment in Malaysia to date, and to complement its existing partnerships and programmes, I look forward to hearing more about how Google cloud technology and innovation capabilities are accelerating the transformation of key sectors.

“We encourage traditional businesses of all sizes, for example, the retail, manufacturing, media and entertainment, education, and healthcare sectors, to capitalise on enablers, such as Google Cloud, to improve operational efficiencies and to capture new domestic and international growth opportunities,” he said. – Bernama, August 12, 2022.