Tencent accelerates global cloud push with its first data centre in Indonesia

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings is “aggressively” stepping up its presence in the global cloud computing industry this year, a company executive said, with new data centres launching in Asia, the Middle East and Europe to take advantage of higher demand for digitalisation spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This year we are going to be a lot more aggressive building out our [cloud] infrastructure around the world,” said Poshu Yeung, senior vice-president of Tencent Cloud International, in an interview with the South China Morning Post. “I’m not going to disclose the exact number and the timeline, but I can highlight that likely it’s going to be another 30 to 50 per cent growth in terms of the number of data centres.”

On Monday, Tencent unveiled a new data centre in Jakarta, its first in Indonesia, with another one set to go online in a few months. Yeung said the company chose Indonesia because it is “one of the fastest growing markets in the region”, where the population has embraced digital transformation during the pandemic, especially in fintech and government services.

When the second location is live, it will be the first time that Tencent launched two data centres in the same market within one year, Yeung said. “It shows how aggressive we are and how much we value Indonesia … and the entire Southeast Asia region,” he added.

Tencent’s accelerated cloud push overseas comes as competition heats up at home and abroad in cloud computing. Providers are rushing to meet rising demand for the technology that supports remote work and learning, e-commerce, online entertainment and other online services.

China’s cloud infrastructure market jumped 66 per cent to reach US$19 billion in 2020, while the global market rose 33 per cent to US$142 billion, according to analytics firm Canalys.