Google is willing to spend as much as $2 billion to develop a cloud services data center in Warsaw, according to Polish daily newspaper Puls Biznesu. It builds on the Alphabet (GOOG 1.43%) (GOOGL 1.42%) subsidiary's commitment to expand its cloud infrastructure in Europe.
The new data center will become part of Google's network of 20 cloud regions and 61 availability zones that serve Google Cloud customers.
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Bringing cloud serves to eastern Europe
Last year, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian wrote in a blog post that Warsaw was chosen because "Poland is in a period of rapid growth, is accelerating its digital transformation, and has become an international software engineering hub."
The investment builds on the $20 million Google CEO Sundar Pichai pledged to support for digital skills programs across central and eastern Europe.
As the largest economy in the eastern EU market, Poland is seeking to become a regional technology powerhouse. Microsoft (MSFT 0.46%) announced last month it was spending $1 billion to erect a data center in the country. The competitive battle for cloud dominance continues to heat up.
Kurian said the data center was being constructed in partnership with Domestic Cloud Provider, a Polish joint venture between PKO Bank Polski, one of the largest financial institutions in central and eastern Europe, and the Polish Development Fund, a state-owned investment firm.
The data center will be a reseller of Google Cloud services in Poland and will build managed services capabilities around Google Cloud. The technology giant expects to have the data center operational by the beginning of 2021.
