A keen-eyed IT expert has found evidence that Australian data centres for Microsoft’s cloud service Azure are already operational, suggesting a launch is imminent.
While testing the connection speed to Azure’s network of global data centres on AzureSpeed.com, Robert Crane from CIAops noticed that the two fastest times came from a new “geo zone”, Australia, with two new regions, Australia East and Southeast. The location field for both entries was empty.
“It would seem that (the test website) is going out to a live data centre and returning live responses” from Australia, Crane said.
Companies using Microsoft Azure to run programs on virtual machines will soon be able to run the programs within Australia, which should lead to faster load times due to lower latency.
“There are a lot of companies with privacy and security concerns about data residing in Australia. There are customers who would prefer not to be running their applications in Singapore,” Crane said.
If you’re in Sydney or Melbourne you should get very, very good responses” in the speed of applications running in Azure’s Australian data centres, he added.
While Microsoft has announced that Azure will be opening up data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, no launch date has been set.
The Australian data centres are not available yet in the control console for Azure, which suggests “they are either just coming online or still under testing”, Crane said.