Today at the Microsoft Tech Summit 2017 in Beijing, Microsoft announced plans to triple their Azure presence in China over the next six months. The expanded presence will offer up new opportunities for Azure customers, helping businesses and cooperations expand their overall coverage in Asia.
Microsoft is planning to triple the capacity of the Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet in China. This was originally launched in March of 2014 and was the first international public cloud service to become available in the China market. As required by Chinese law, Azure in China is mainly provided via a partnership between Microsoft and Chinese datacenter operator 21Vianet, setting the stage for other cloud services who have considered entering the China region.
Azure has over 1,000 cloud partners in China, and 80,000 enterprise customers such as Lenovo and Huawei, and even mobile phone manufacturer Xiaomi. It will be interesting to see how these companies can use Azure to their advantage in the months ahead.