The investment is part of Google’s plan to invest $1.08 billion in Germany’s digital infrastructure and clean energy by 2030. Credit: Tada Images / Shutterstock Google has opened a second cloud region in Germany as part of its plan to invest $1.08 billion in German digital infrastructure by 2030. Dubbed the Berlin-Brandenburg region, the new data center will be operational alongside the Frankfurt region and will offer services such as the Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk, CloudSQL, Virtual Private Cloud, Key Management System, Cloud Identity and Secret Manager. Other services, such as Cloud Run, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud MemCache, Apigee, Cloud Redis, Cloud Spanner, Extreme PD, Cloud Load Balancer, Cloud Interconnect, BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Dataproc, Pub/Sub, are expected to be made available within six months of the launch of the region. “The new region brings high-performance, low-latency services and products to customers of all sizes, from public sector organizations to small, medium, and large enterprises and startups in Germany and the European Union,” the company wrote in a blog post, adding that enterprises in the region will also benefit from key controls that allow them to maintain high security, data residency, and compliance standards, including specific data storage requirements. The Berlin-Brandenburg region will be the company’s 12th region in Europe and 38th globally. Other Google Cloud regions in Europe include locations such as Milan, Paris, Zurich, Warsaw, Madrid, Turin, Belgium, Finland, The Netherlands, and London. AWS, Oracle, and Microsoft Azure also have at least one region each in Germany. Google Cloud has been investing heavily in opening more cloud regions to compete with larger rivals such as AWS and Microsoft. In March, Google launched a second region in the Middle East. In October last year, Google announced it would open new regions across Austria, Greece, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden to supplement the regions in New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, and Mexico. Rival public cloud services providers, such as Microsoft and Oracle, too have revealed plans to expand their cloud region footprint. In July last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company would launch 10 new cloud regions over the following year. Similarly, in June 2022, Oracle CEO Safra Catz said the company expected to add another six regions in the following year. It launched two of these new sovereign regions in the European Union the following month. AWS, too, has been expanding its global cloud footprint. In November last year, it launched a second region in India, and in March it made a cloud region available in Malaysia. Related content opinion The cyber pandemic: AI deepfakes and the future of security and identity verification Attackers have seen huge success using AI deepfakes for injection and presentation attacks – which means we’ll only see more of them. Advanced technology can help prevent (not just detect them). By Aaron Painter May 02, 2024 5 mins Artificial Intelligence Security brandpost Sponsored by Cisco Transform the modern data center: From today to the future Embrace agility, elasticity, and cognitive intelligence capabilities for a data center strategy that’s performance-ready and sustainable for the future. By Murali Gandluru May 02, 2024 4 mins Networking brandpost Sponsored by TCS and Microsoft 5 keys to optimizing ROI on your Cloud Center of Excellence 5 keys to optimizing ROI on your Cloud Center of Excellence CoE adoption is on the rise – but success means evaluating relevance, staying connected, building a strong team, continuous innovation, and transforming culture. By Tata Consultancy Services May 02, 2024 2 mins Manufacturing Industry Cloud Computing brandpost Sponsored by TCS and Microsoft Best practice advice for improving productivity while maintaining security The modern “borderless workplace” requires a new strategy. Microsoft and TCS are answering the challenge with innovation solutions. By Tata Consultancy Services May 02, 2024 1 min Manufacturing Industry Microsoft Cloud Computing PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe