Microsoft will Open Its First Cloud Region in Malaysia

Microsoft plans to open its first cloud region in Malaysia, the Malaysia West cloud region, in the second quarter of 2025. The company expects to generate $10.9 billion in new revenue in Malaysia with its partners and customers over the next four years, with the cloud region contributing approximately 16.9%.
According to IDC Research commissioned by Microsoft to conduct research on the Malaysian cloud market, the Western Malaysia cloud region will also drive local economic investment and create 37575 new jobs, including 700 high skilled IT positions.
Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director Laurence Si stated in last Thursday’s announcement, “The Western Malaysia Cloud Region is not only a technological infrastructure, but also a key driver of the country’s AI economic growth. Local businesses and organizations will be able to innovate faster and more securely, driving Malaysia to become the center of cloud and AI development in Southeast Asia.”

Details of the Western Malaysia Cloud Region

The Western Malaysia Cloud Region will include three data centers located in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area, providing Microsoft’s full suite of cloud services, including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365/Power Platform.
This area will have three availability zones, which are independent physical locations with low latency connections but far enough from each other to reduce local interruptions and extreme weather risks. Each availability zone is equipped with independent power, cooling, and network infrastructure to ensure that in the event of a failure in one availability zone, other availability zones can still support regional services and high availability.
In addition, the Western Malaysia cloud region will connect to Microsoft’s global wide area network (WAN), providing high bandwidth, low latency international connectivity. This will help Malaysian companies easily expand into the global market, while providing a gateway for global businesses to enter Southeast Asia.
The new cloud region also aims to meet local data residency requirements, ensuring that enterprises can securely manage data to comply with government regulations.

Data center is the core infrastructure of AI

Microsoft stated that the new hyperscale data centers are a key infrastructure for accelerating the adoption of AI in Malaysia, as they provide the computing power needed for training, testing, and deploying AI solutions.
The company stated in a blog post on Thursday that “AI requires powerful computing power to run machine learning algorithms, perform complex data analysis, and make real-time data-driven decisions. Data centers, especially high-capacity data centers, are the core infrastructure that meets these needs and fully unleashes the potential of AI.”
According to research by Microsoft and Access Partnership, the rapid adoption of AI in Malaysia is expected to have significant economic impacts, with generative AI expected to unleash $113.4 billion in productivity, equivalent to approximately 25% of Malaysia’s GDP in 2022.