Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO announced the planned capacity expansion at the Microsoft Tech Summit 2017 in Beijing on Tuesday 31 October.
During the event Nadella said that the new Azure capacity in China offers a great opportunity for customers in region, including both multinational corporations who are extending their business to China, as well as Chinese corporations that interested in expanding to cover Asia more broadly.
Microsoft Azure is operated by 21Vianet in China and is the first international public cloud service to become generally available in the Chinese market.
Microsoft Azure in China is offered through a partnership between Microsoft and Chinese data centre operator 21Vianet. The business model established between the two companies has set a benchmark for global cloud services entering China and remains the strongest example of how such collaboration can work in the Chinese market.
Since its launch three years ago, Azure in China has gathered over 1,000 cloud partners and 80,000 enterprise customers. Customers and partners range from established Chinese brands such as Haier, Lenovo, and Huawei, to emerging companies such as mobile phone manufacturer Xiaomi and bike-share company Mobike. Nadella’s announcement will further benefit these companies by providing increased flexibility and expanding access to cutting-edge Azure cloud services. Also the increased capacity will also make it easier for multinational companies to meet the needs of customers in China.
In October of this year, PCCW Global launched an online cloud connect network-as-a-service offering its partners connectivity to Microsoft Azure. The Online Cloud Connect service extends a customer’s MPLS network service to Azure and Microsoft Office 365, meaning the service is both protected from the public internet and has improved latency.
Additionally, Daisy Group, the managed services provider, chose the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to fuel its modernisation programme to reshape both the business and the services it offers to customers. It now offers a next-generation hybrid hosting platform, combining Azure with its own private cloud, enabling its customers to move away from legacy on premise systems to become cloud-enabled businesses.
