Mirroring the speed at which the Asia Pacific cloud market is growing, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) said it is today opening its second cloud region in Australia, in Melbourne.

The news come just over 10 days after the public cloud operator launched a region in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR), India.

The Melbourne footprint has been deployed to serve not only Australia but also neighbouring New Zealand. This is Google 27^th cloud region worldwide and the 12^th in APAC.

Matt Zwolenski, director of technology and architecture for Google Cloud Australia and New Zealand, said: “We launched our first region in Australia [in Sydney] in 2017 and since then, we have had overwhelming feedback from our customers that ‘we’d love you to expand your services, and launch another region’.

“The region makes it easier for small customers, small organisations, small and medium enterprises, startups, digital natives and large traditional enterprises, to leverage on-demand compute network and storage resources, as well as very advanced data and AI capabilities and app modernization capabilities that we have within Google Cloud.”

Zwolenski said that Google has enabled business and consumers in Australia to gain as much as AU$3.2 billion in annual gross benefits to, including AU$686 million to customers and AU$698 million to partners, since the business opened its Sydney region.

Google is due to open new cloud regions with three zones in Santiago (Chile), Toronto (Canada), Madrid (Spain), Paris (France), Milan (Italy), Turin (Italy), and Doha (Qatar).

Also in Australia, Google has appointed former VMware Asia Pacific and Japan networking and security vice president Alister Dias as its new vice president for Australia and New Zealand. 

The executive will be based in Sydney and has been tasked with driving the company’s go-to-market strategy, deepening key customer and partner relationships and being responsible for operational execution across the A/NZ region. 

Karan Bajwa, vice president of Google Cloud for Asia Pacific, said: “Alister brings a wealth of experience to this role, blending proven technical and sales expertise with people and culture-centric leadership skills.

“He joins us at an exciting time of growth as we build on our momentum working with enterprise and digital native customers and partners across Australia and New Zealand.”

Dias added: “Google Cloud’s innovative technology and industry-based solutions support some of the most digitally advanced organisations in the region. I’m excited to continue this growth and support even more A/NZ businesses.”