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Google reveals rapid cloud expansion

Announces a dozen new regions by end of 2017

Google has decided to play catch-up with Amazon Web Services (AWS), announcing that it's going to add 12 regions to its cloud services by the end of 2017.

The rollout will start with a Western US region hosted in Oregon, and an East Asia region to be built in Tokyo. Each of these regions will have multiple availability zones, Google says.

Its existing regions are Eastern US (South Carolina), Central US (Iowa), Western Europe (Belgium), and an East Asia region hosted in Taiwan.

The announcement coincided with a speech by Mountain View's cloud boss Diane Greene, in which she signalled a renewed sales push for Google Cloud Platform.

Bloomberg reports Greene told the company's cloudy Oompa-Loompas they're not taking enterprise customers seriously enough.

The push will include hiring people to sell and explain the cloud offerings, Bloomberg says.

Greene said her personal focus is on "bringing everybody together so that we all know what we're doing."

Greene reportedly wants to make Google Cloud Platform less self-service, instead creating an enterprise team to get in front of the C-class and explain why they should host with the Chocolate Factory. That push will be backed by the usual "guess who's using our products?" story placements, which have begun with Google briefing The Wall Street Journal that it's signed Disney to the platform (paywalled).

Amazon has a big lead in the cloud services market; Bloomberg cites Morgan Stanley data putting its AWS revenue at US$8 billion annually, with Microsoft Azure second and Google Cloud Platform a distant third at $500 million.

Quadrupling its regions from four to sixteen will still leave Google behind Amazon, since the latter already has 12 regions and has announced plans for another five. ®

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