Microsoft finds new home for Cloud services in Perth

Microsoft has promised WA businesses less painful lag as it readies to expand its services in the State by mid-2025.

The global computing giant will roll out a so-called ‘Azure Extended Zone’ — or a local extension to house its Azure cloud computing software — somewhere in Perth.

“The tyranny of distance is the age old problem in Australia, and Western Australia in particular,” Microsoft Azure Infrastructure senior director Alistair Speirs said.

“By operating something in Perth, you’re really shaving off that 3000-kilometre journey across the Nullarbor in terms of performance.”

Storing cloud services locally is designed to reduce “latency” or lag, with the State Government set to be among the first to use the new infrastructure.

Iron ore miner Roy Hill and gold miner Northern Star are also touted as operators that will “quickly benefit”.

Microsoft says there is growing demand for cloud and artificial intelligence services in WA.

“We see in in Western Australia, in the public sector, in healthcare, in the energy and the natural resources section, a lot of area of growth here, and a lot of really interesting cloud use cases , whether it’s high performance computing or geospatial information systems,” Mr Speirs said.

Sydney and Melbourne host the majority of Australia’s data centres, but there has been a push to try and build more in Perth.

Microsoft would not provide any details of the the scale of the new infrastructure development or roughly where it would be located.

Data centres have become increasingly more important pieces of infrastructure in the past decade, storing vast corridors of servers businesses and households rely on.

But they demand huge amounts of electricity to run and need enough land space to be built.

National security also plays into the mix, with many operators looking to keep local data onshore for security reasons.

Shares in Australian data centre operator NextDC are up 138 per cent over the past five years amid strong growth in the sector.