In the past year, Google has worked to surface timely and reliable health information, amplify public health campaigns, and help nonprofits get urgent support to Indians in need. Now, we are continuing to focus on helping India’s businesses accelerate their digital transformation, deepening our commitment to India’s digitization and economic recovery. To support customers and the public sector in India and across Asia Pacific, we’re excited to announce that our new Google Cloud region in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) is now open. 

Designed to help both Indian and global companies alike build highly available applications for their customers, the Delhi NCR region is our second Google Cloud region in India and 10th to open in Asia Pacific. 

What customers and partners are saying

Navigating this past year has been a challenge for companies as they grapple with changing customers demands and economic uncertainty. Technology has played a critical role, and we’ve been fortunate to partner with and serve people, companies, and government institutions around the world to help them adapt. The Google Cloud region in Delhi NCR will help our customers adapt to new requirements, new opportunities and new ways of working, like we’ve helped so many companies do in the region: 

• InMobi scaled a personalized AI platform to support 120+ million active users. “With the arrival of the Google Cloud Delhi NCR, InMobi Group sees the opportunity to continue closing the gap between our users and products,” says Mohit Saxena, Co-founder and Group CTO of Inmobi. “Glance, especially, has been serving AI-powered personalised content to over 120 million active users. We can’t wait to continue giving them truly meaningful experiences that are speedy, scale well, and are relevant to them, by expanding the use of our current tools working on Google Cloud with the opening of a new region.”
• Groww now supports a sizable user base. “Google Cloud provides great technology that enables us to build and scale infrastructure to millions of users, and the new Google Cloud region in Delhi NCR will continue to help more businesses and startups in India access powerful cloud-based infrastructure, products and services,” says Neeraj Singh, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Groww.
• HDFC Bank is positioned for the future. “At HDFC Bank, we are harnessing technology platforms to both run and build the bank. As we progress to be future ready, the objective is to invest in future technologies that give us scale, efficiency and resiliency. Towards this the Google Cloud region in Delhi NCR will enable us to enhance our resiliency and help us in building an active-active design framework for our new generation applications on cloud,” says Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, CIO, HDFC Bank.  
• Dr. Reddy’s Lab built a modern data platform with Google Cloud. “At Dr Reddy’s, we pride ourselves in helping patients regain good health, acting quickly to provide innovative solutions to address patients’ unmet needs and in accelerating access to medicines to people worldwide. Our Google Cloud-powered data platform is helping us realize these objectives and we welcome Google’s investment in the new Delhi NCR region as helping us and other businesses in India make further contributions to our social and economic future,” says Mukesh Rathi, Senior Vice President & CIO, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories.
• “To survive the disruption caused by the pandemic and to succeed in the long term, organizations need to become digital natives, so they can be more agile, explore new business models and build new capabilities that boost resilience. A cloud-first strategy plays a key role in enabling businesses to do this,” said Piyush N. Singh, Lead – India market unit & lead – Growth and Strategic Client Relationships, Asia Pacific and Latin America, Accenture. “Harnessing the potential of cloud requires the right data infrastructure and this expansion by Google Cloud will undoubtedly help Indian enterprises in their digital transformation journeys.”

A global network of regions

Delhi NCR joins 25 existing Google Cloud regions connected via our high-performance network, helping customers better serve their users and customers throughout the globe. As the second region in India, customers benefit from improved business continuity planning with distributed, secure infrastructure needed to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery, while maintaining data sovereignty.

With this new region, Google Cloud customers operating in India also benefit from low latency and high performance of their cloud-based workloads and data. Designed for high availability, the region opens with three availability zones to protect against service disruptions, and offers a portfolio of key products, including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner, and BigQuery. 

Supporting India’s recovery with training and education

Google and Google Cloud will also continue to support our customers with people and education programs. We’re investing in local talent and the local developer community to help enterprises digitally transform and support economic recovery. 

Through the India Digitization Fund, we expanded our efforts to support India’s recovery from COVID-19—in particular, through programs to support education and small businesses. In addition to expanding internet access, and investments to help start-ups accelerate India’s digital transformation, we’ve grown our Grow with Google efforts. Businesses can access digital tools to maintain business continuity, find resources like quick help videos, and learn digital skills—in both English and in Hindi.

Helping customers build their transformation clouds

Google Cloud is here to support businesses, helping them get smarter with data, deploy faster, connect more easily with people and customers throughout the globe, and protect everything that matters to their businesses. The cloud region in Delhi NCR offers new technology and tools that can be a catalyst for this change. To learn more, visit the Google Cloud locations page, and be sure to watch the region launch event here.

About FNM Group

FNM Group is the main private, integrated group in transportation and mobility in the North of Italy.

Industries: Other

Location: Italy

About Innext

Innext, one of Italy’s select Google Cloud Premier Partners, helps companies turn objectives into tangible actions, and change into a competitive advantage.

Industries:

Location:

Founded in 1877, the FNM Group is Italy’s second largest railway company, operating in the Lombardy region. With 700,000 passengers a day, the core business remains with railway operations, but in recent years the FNM Group has redefined itself as a mobility service provider rather than just a public transport operator, with transport solutions like car-sharing platforms in parts of the country disconnected from the main railway lines. As part of this evolution, in 2016, FNM Group initiated a new strategy to overhaul its technology and build a platform that could support its ambitious, new direction.

“We needed an IT system that could rapidly adapt to the new market requirements we are planning to address,” says Augusto de Castro, Director of Human Resources, Organization, and IT at FNM Group. “To achieve this goal, we decided to modernize our information system and move to a cloud-based infrastructure, so we started testing various solutions. For us, the best came from Google.”

Collaborative office productivity

Since 2005, the FNM Group had used SAP Business Suite for its platform, using on-premises servers to manage its technology and database solutions. By 2016, when the group expanded its horizons, the on-premises infrastructure was showing its age and limitations. In addition, FNM Group office productivity tools limited workers’ mobility and flexibility. The company decided that a cloud-based solution was the most economical and effective infrastructure for its new innovation-focused strategy, but also wanted to continue the high-quality service it received from SAP.

In April 2017, FNM Group teamed up with Innext, a leading Italian consultancy and Google Cloud Premier Partner, to help transition to the cloud. After taking the time to assess specific needs at FNM Group, Innext supported the company’s decision to start the project with a migration to G Suite, replacing the existing email and office productivity platform. With help from Innext, FNM Group provided its workers with new tools such as Gmail, cloud-based storage on Google Drive, and fast, effective collaboration with Google Hangouts. As well as technical help, Innext brought a whole change management program designed to help FMN workers take full advantage of the new platform. “One of our top goals in any project is the adoption of the G Suite platform,” says Andrea Servili, Co-founder and Partner at Innext.

Cloud-based enterprise solutions with SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA

While defining the G Suite migration, Innext and FNM Group began looking for an infrastructure solution. The timing was perfect. Earlier in the year, Google announced that SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA, the latest software from SAP, would be able to run on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Running on Google Compute Engine instances, Google Cloud Storage for backups, and Google Virtual Private Cloud as a networking solution, FNM Group can continue to use the enterprise platform of its choice along with all the advantages of Google cloud technology. By July, 2018, FNM Group plans to have fully migrated to SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA on GCP and have its 1,200 employees using G Suite.

“SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA on Google Cloud Platform and G Suite will make our employees much more mobile,” says Augusto. “They can access the system through a web browser if they have to, so they’re not tied to a local physical interface.”

Building a platform to last

With Innext and SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA on GCP, FNM Group is building an enterprise infrastructure that can handle the demands of its traditional public transport operations and adapt to the company’s more innovative activities, such as car-sharing or energy management. By the time the migration is complete in 2018, FNM Group will save on infrastructure costs by only paying for the resources it uses with flexible pricing from Google. G Suite lets the company’s workers stay mobile and effective, and with Google Compute Engine, FNM Group can easily scale its infrastructure up or down to meet whatever challenges it faces in the future. Meanwhile, Google Cloud Storage helps ensure that FNM Group will have a highly secure, reliable backup solution. Once the migration is complete, FNM Group can start exploring other ways in which Google can help its business, especially with data analytic products like Google BigQuery or Google Cloud AI machine learning tools. Whatever the challenge, FNM Group knows that it can rely on Innext and Google to provide the right solution.

“Our main priority is to shut down our on-premises infrastructure and take advantage of the benefits of the cloud,” says Augusto. “Google Cloud Platform and SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA will help us reduce our maintenance costs and improve our flexibility. I think we will spend less time continually upgrading our infrastructure and more time improving our productivity.”

When our founders began Mambu in 2011, their goal was to bring the latest digital technologies to the banking and finance world. Banking, in particular, is an industry built on decades of deep legacy technology. So initially, Mambu was embraced by microfinance — 100 organizations in 26 countries in just the first two years. 

Since then, acceptance of modernizing core banking services by using composable, cloud technologies has grown across financial services institutions (FSIs). We now service top-tier banks, fintech startups, and other finance organizations across six continents, helping them deliver flexible, personalized, customer-centric banking products and services that their customers can depend upon.

One of the main reasons we’ve been able to scale the Mambu composable banking platform across the globe and at our current pace is our partnership with Google Cloud. The decision to move forward with Google Cloud happened for several reasons.

1. Flexibility and openness. Many FSIs are on hybrid and multicloud technology stacks, as they may still be transitioning from legacy systems, or have data residency requirements that have led them to use different clouds in different regions. Mambu meets customers wherever they are in their cloud journeys. We support interoperability without vendor lock-in. This need for openness, as well as the scalability benefits, led Mambu to evolve our platform on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Many customers use open-source Kubernetes because, this common foundation can help streamline integration, speed up time to market, and reduce development. Just as important, the Google Cloud open cloud approach matches our company values. 

2. Security and data residency. For customers in highly regulated finance industries, security isn’t just top of mind,  it’s the No. 1 requirement. In addition to Google Cloud’s secure infrastructure, external audit certifications, and encryption, its wide array of regions has allowed us to expand into more countries, where we serve banks that must meet local data residency requirements. For example, Google Cloud’s Jakarta Cloud Region, has allowed us to support Bank Jago in Indonesia as it brings more financial inclusion to the unbanked in that country.

3. Availability. It’s critical for banks to maintain basic financial functionality, like accepting deposits and serving cash, even amid a service disruption. We needed a cloud partner with impeccable redundancy, failover, and disaster recovery capabilities.

In addition to GKE, the Mambu platform uses several other Google Cloud services for specific functions, including Cloud Armor, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud VPN, Cloud Memorystore, and Google Cloud Operations.

Another important reason we chose to partner with Google Cloud was its expansive ecosystem and commitment to innovation. We are midway into a three-year journey to modernize our own technology stack to meet customer needs.

Building a roadmap with Google Cloud

Our customers need a core banking technology platform that will grow with them as they bring to market innovative services built on the latest technology advances. For Mambu to be that platform, we need a cloud partner that supports and scales with our growth. While we originally built our cloud architecture on GKE and Compute Engine (among a few other Google Cloud services), we’re now looking to a serverless future where we can scale more easily and leverage managed services within Google Cloud and its partner ecosystem to focus on our core offerings. 

These are just some of the modernization and customer-led innovations that we’re cooking up: 

• More workloads in GKE: Like many companies, our cloud transformation is a work in progress. While much of our codebase is in GKE, we’re continuing to break up some larger pieces of code into microservices to increase agility and velocity, enabling us to make consistent updates to discrete areas of our platform without affecting the whole. GKE is the leader for orchestrating microservices at scale and continues to be a natural fit.
• Native BigQuery integration: Mambu customers collect a tremendous amount of data within the platform that can be used for analytics, personalization, and other use cases. We’re planning to create a seamless integration for feeding core banking data from Mambu into BigQuery so that customers can better leverage their valuable data.
• CloudSQL vs. self-managed MySQL: We have almost completed migrating from our own MySQL instances to managed Cloud SQL databases, which will open up new opportunities to implement customer-centric solutions such as BigQuery integration.
• A serverless future with Cloud Run: Compute Engine is working well for Mambu, providing the flexibility to choose the virtual machines that best balance performance and cost needs. As we seek even more time and cost efficiencies, we believe the elastic scalability of a serverless architecture built on Cloud Run will get us there, and we’re considering going serverless in the future. Doing so would abstract infrastructure for simpler management, while allowing us to fire up containers to meet our customers’ high transactions-per-second needs, spin them down when not needed, and pay only when they run. It would also boost security: Without long-running compute, there are no patches or fixes, and each new instance is isolated and fresh by default.

These are just a handful of examples of the ways we want to best leverage Google Cloud services to simplify how we manage our tech stack, as well as continue to bolster security, scalability, and performance. There are many other ideas we’re exploring: using Dataproc and Datastream to support the specific data needs of Islamic banking, Cloud Functions so that customers can run their own queries against Mambu, and AI-enabled features. 

At Mambu, our mission is to empower our customers to deliver great modern financial experiences easily to everyone around the world. Every time Google Cloud opens a new data center, we can enter a new market. Every time we move to a new-to-us managed service via the Google Cloud Marketplace, we free up time to build new ways to deliver customer-centric banking solutions. And so, we look forward to continuing this partnership with Google Cloud well into the future.

Digital tools offered by cloud computing are fueling transformation around the world, including in Asia Pacific. In fact, IDC expects that total spending on cloud services in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will reach 282 billion USD by 2025.1 To meet growing demand for cloud services in Asia Pacific, we are excited to announce our plans to bring three new Google Cloud regions to Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand — on top of six other regions that we previously announced are coming to Berlin, Dammam, Doha, Mexico, Tel Aviv, and Turin.

When they launch, these new regions will join our 34 cloud regions currently in operation around the world — 11 of which are located in Asia Pacific — delivering high-performance services running on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Enterprises across industries, startups, and public sector organizations across Asia Pacific will benefit from key controls that enable them to maintain low latency and the highest security, data residency, and compliance standards, including specific data storage requirements.

“The new Google Cloud regions will help to address organizations’ increasing needs in the area of digital sovereignty and enable more opportunities for digital transformation and innovation in Asia Pacific. With this announcement, Google Cloud is providing customers with more choices in accessing capabilities from local cloud regions while aiding their journeys to hybrid and multi-cloud environments,” said Daphne Chung, Research Director, Cloud Services and Software Research, IDC Asia/Pacific.

What customers and partners are saying

From retail and media & entertainment to financial services and public sector, leading organizations come to Google Cloud as their trusted innovation partner. The new Google Cloud regions in Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand will help our customers continue to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems. We will work with our customers to ensure the cloud region fits their evolving needs.

“Kami was born out of the digital native era, where in order to scale globally we needed a partner like Google Cloud who could support us on our ongoing innovation journey. We have since delivered an engaging and dependable experience for millions of teachers and students around the world, so it’s incredibly exciting to hear about the new region coming to New Zealand. This investment from Google Cloud will enable us to deliver services with lower latency to our Kiwi users, which will further elevate and optimize our free premium offering to all New Zealand schools.” – Jordan Thoms, Chief Technology Officer, Kami

“Our customers are at the heart of our business, and helping Kiwis find what they are looking for, faster than ever before, is our key priority. Our collaboration with Google Cloud has been pivotal in ensuring the stability and resilience of our infrastructure, allowing us to deliver world-class experiences to the 650,000 Kiwis that visit our site every day. We welcome Google Cloud’s investment in New Zealand, and are looking forward to more opportunities to partner closely on our technology transformation journey.” – Anders Skoe, CEO, Trade Me

“Digital transformation plays a key role in helping Vodafone deliver better customer experiences and connect all Kiwis. We welcome Google Cloud’s investment in New Zealand and look forward to working together to offer more enriched experiences for local businesses, and the communities we serve,” said Jason Paris, CEO, Vodafone New Zealand

“Our journey with Google Cloud spans almost half a decade, with our most recent partnership and co-innovation initiatives paving the way for AirAsia and Capital A to disrupt the digital platform arena in the same vein as we did airlines. The announcement of a new cloud region that’s coming to Malaysia – and Thailand too if I may add – showcases Google Cloud’s continuous desire to expand its in-region capabilities to complement and support our aspiration of establishing the airasia Super App at the center of our e-commerce, logistics and fintech ecosystem, while enriching the local community and giving all 700 million people in Asean inclusivity, accessibility, and value. I couldn’t be more excited about this massive milestone and the new possibilities that Google Cloud’s growing network of cloud regions will create for us, our peers, and the common man.” – Tony Fernandes, CEO, Capital A

“Google Cloud’s world-class cloud-based analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) tools have enabled Media Prima to embed a digital DNA across our organization, deliver trusted and real-time news updates during peak periods when people need them the most, and implement whole new engagement models like content commerce, thereby allowing us to diversify our revenue streams and remain at the forefront of an industry in transition. By allowing us to place our digital infrastructure and applications even closer to our audiences, this cloud region will supercharge data-driven content production and distribution, and our ability to enrich the lives of Malaysians by informing, entertaining, and engaging them through new and innovative mediums.” – Rafiq Razali, Group Managing Director, Media Prima

“Google Cloud’s global network has been playing an integral role in Krungthai Bank’s adoption of advanced data analytics, cybersecurity, AI, and open banking capabilities to earn and retain the trust of the 40 million Thais who use our digital services to meet their daily financing needs. This new cloud region is a fundamentally important milestone that will help accelerate our continuous digital reinvention and sustainable growth strategy within the local regulatory framework, thereby allowing us to reach and serve Thais at all levels, including unbanked consumers and small business owners, no matter where they may be.” – Payong Srivanich, CEO, Krungthai Bank

“Having migrated our operations and applications onto Google Cloud’s superior data cloud infrastructure, we are already delivering more personalized services and experiences to small business owners, delivery riders, and consumers than ever before – and in a more cost efficient and sustainable way. With the new cloud region, we will be physically closer to the computing resources that Google Cloud has to offer, and able to access cloud technologies in a faster and even more complete way. This will help strengthen our mission: to build a homegrown ‘super app’ that assists smaller players and revitalizes the grassroots economy.” – Thana Thienachariya, Chairman of the Board, Purple Ventures Co., Ltd. (Robinhood)

Delivering a global network

These new cloud regions represent our ongoing commitment to supporting digital transformation across Asia Pacific. We continue to invest in expanding connectivity throughout the region by working with partners in the telecommunications industry to establish subsea cables — including Apricot, Echo, JGA South, INDIGO, and Topaz — and points of presence in major cities.

Learn more about our global cloud infrastructure, including new and upcoming regions.

1. Source: Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Whole Cloud Forecast, 2020—2025, Doc # AP47756122, February 2022