Microsoft triples cloud capacity, notes triple-digit growth in China

Microsoft Corp announced on Tuesday that it has tripled its cloud capacity and its cloud service has achieved triple-digit growth in China with the opportunities brought by the stronger-than-expected demand from local companies.

The company also said that it will add another two regions and two data centers in the country to serve its 110,000 customers at present and more in the future.

The move came just several months after the company announced its triple increase plan late last year, as China gained strong momentum in digital transformation and called for more intensified efforts to develop advanced technologies, including big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

"China's digital transformation has developed at an unprecedented speed and has created huge and precious opportunities. The Chinese market has become one of our largest markets globally," said Kang Rong, vice-president of Microsoft Greater China.

It also announced the company will commercialize Azure Stack hybrid cloud solutions next month in China, which was provided in collaboration with hardware makers such as Dell EMC

The solution mainly aims at meeting enterprises' growing demand for local data centers with more flexible computing capability.

Kang added that Microsoft is ramping up efforts to not only help companies "locally" but also "globally" to aid them when going abroad.

"It is inevitable that Chinese enterprises will encounter a series of problems, including data storage and efficient data operation, when going out," said Zhang Zhenyuan, head of information technology at Spring Airlines, China's first and largest budget carrier.

"In Japan, Microsoft Azure has accelerated the speed of our webpages and reduced operation costs by more than 30 percent," he added.