This month’s web hosting news features yet another ambitious expansion plan by a data centre company in the Asia-Pacific region. Meanwhile, Google experiments with AI and blockchain; and Alibaba sets its sights outside of China with the launch of new products for its global market.
Google uses AI system by DeepMind to cool data centres
Google has used this system since 2016 to improve the energy efficiency of their data centres by 40%. Until recently, operators would implement the recommendations given to them by AI, but now Google lets the system control the cooling process directly.
DeepMind’s neural networks analyse data from cooling systems every 5 minutes to predict which actions will minimize energy consumption while fulfilling safety needs.
Google aims to integrate blockchain technology to its cloud services
Google announced it’s partnering with startups developing distributed ledger technology (DLT) to introduce blockchain to its cloud platform. The company said that users will soon be able to test a comprehensive set of tools designed for developers to build blockchain apps in the cloud.
Launch partners currently include Digital Asset and BlockApp. The new DLT integrations will be available in the GCP marketplace later this year.
Alibaba Cloud launches 9 new products for its global market
Hot on the heels of expanding its presence across southeast Asia, Alibaba Cloud has announced the launch of nine products for the global market at a cloud computing conference held in Singapore.
The new products include an IoT platform and toolkit, a machine learning platform, an online backup and security scanning service, and a dedicated hosting service. All of which will be available to Alibaba’s users outside of China.
The company also expanded partnerships and debuted a partner program.
AirTrunk raises AU$850m for two new data centres
AirTrunk plans to expand its data centres in Sydney and Melbourne and received a major boost after raising AU$850m to finance the project. They claim that the two Australian facilities will be the largest independent data centres in the Asia-Pacific region when completed – at 90 MW and 84 MW.
“We saw a substantial amount of global interest in AirTrunk throughout the process,” said founder and CEO, Robin Khuda. “The new funds put us in a strong position to meet the growing demand from large cloud, content, and enterprise customers in the Asia-Pacific region.”