Microsoft Corp yesterday said it plans to expand its data center deployment and artificial intelligence (AI) services in Taiwan to match fast-growing demand from local vertical industries as AI applications gain traction.
The Redmond, Washington-based cloud service provider enabled its first phase of its Azure data center in Taiwan last year, allowing early adotping customers to access its cloud and AI services, four years after it announced a mega data center investment in 2020.
The Taiwan Azure “data center region” would comprise three to four data centers, Microsoft said.
Photo: CNA
“After we enabled the first of our one-plus-one data center projects last year, we hope to introduce three-to-plue-one data center projects very soon,” Microsoft Taiwan Corp general manager Sean Pien (卞志祥) told reporters on the sidelines of a media briefing yesterday.
The investment helped Microsoft fully deliver Microsoft’s cloud and AI services to local enterprises by overcoming regulatory barriers barring data collected locally from being stored overseas, Pien said.
Microsoft’s data center customers are from almost all sectors, including government agencies, medical institutions, financial service providers and telecoms, which are usually the last adopters of cloud-based AI services due to data security and privacy concerns, he said.
Early adopters, such as technology companies, embrace high-performance computing and real-time inference applications for on-site devices, he said.
More than 200 functions or applications are available for Microsoft’s customers in Taiwan, he said.
The number of functions matches the offerings from Microsoft’s data centers elsewhere in the world, he said.
Microsoft said it is not worried about the connectivity resilience of its data centers, as Taiwan operates more submarine cables than most people imagine, Pien said in response to a question about the risk of connection disruptions after several subsea cables connecting Taiwan to other regions were sabotaged in the past few months, with some cut by Chinese vessels.
Microsoft plans to utilize medium Earth orbit and low Earth orbit satellites to enhance connectivity resilience, he said.
Although the services of SpaceX’s Starlink are not available in Taiwan, Pien said there are other options.
Meanwhile, Nvidia Corp’s investment in OpenAI to build a 10 gigawatt AI data center sent a positive message, Pien said.
The deal indicates that AI applications have gained traction as the world’s major technology firms start investing in AI infrastructure again, he said.
Microsoft’s partnerships with OpenAI are strong, he added.
Microsoft remains the major AI computing power supporter for OpenAI and the first company offering AI applications based on the latest language models developed by OpenAI, Pien said.
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