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Google eyes second Australian cloud region, is keen to host classified data

Google eyes second Australian cloud region, is keen to host classified data

Cloud provider keen for further growth among public sector organisations

Credit: Dreamstime

Google has continued to build up the capacity of its Sydney cloud region since its mid-2017 launch, but the company is also in throes of planning for a second Australian-based region.

“We continue to bring more and more capacity and more and more capability to our infrastructure as we grow and the demand grows,” said Colin Timm, Google Cloud’s ANZ country director.

The second Australia-based Google Cloud Platform region will be located in another capital city. The cloud provider isn’t yet prepared to publicly announce the city, but Timm told Computerworld “it stands to reason, we need to be close to our customers”.

“Obviously we’re providing for disaster recovery across sovereign data and of course we’re reducing latency at every turn,” the local Google Cloud head said. “Hang that off of Google's private network that we have, and the subsea cables now around the other end of Australia [the INDIGO cable system] — that presents for a very solid story around our capacity in-country.”

The cloud provider is also interested in making it easier for government agencies to use its services to process classified data.

In December 2018, the Australian Cyber Security Centre announced that 16 Google Cloud Platform services had been certified for use with unclassified but sensitive government data.

Google was added to the Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL), joining the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, as well as Australian providers such as Macquarie Telecom, Sliced Tech and Vault Systems.

The certified services comprised compute (Compute Engine, App Engine and Kubernetes Engine), storage (Cloud Storage and Persistent Disk), networking (Virtual Private Cloud, Cloud Load Balancing and Cloud DNS), security (Cloud Key Management Service and Cloud IAM), management (Stackdriver), data analytics (Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Dataproc and Cloud Datalab), and databases (Cloud SQL and Cloud Datastore).

“We are working to the next level of certification,” Timm said. “We have policy people landing on shore here; we will be relentless in our pursuit of that.”

Google is intent on building out its base of public sector customers, Timm said.

Microsoft had its certification for hosting data classified as Protected accepted in April 2018, coinciding with the company’s launch of its government-focused Canberra Azure regions. In January 2019, AWS received the green light to host government data classified at the Protected level. Macquarie, Sliced and Vault are also certified for hosting Protecting data.

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Tags cloud computingGoogleGoogle Cloud PlatformCertified Cloud Services List

More about AmazonAmazon Web ServicesANZAustraliaAWSDataflowGoogleMacquarie TelecomMicrosoftVault Systems

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