Microsoft brings Azure to Taiwan, therefore steps into a geopolitical cauldron

Microsoft has announced that it will open an Azure region in Taiwan. The announcement appears - perhaps curiously - not to have reached Microsoft’s global newsroom or the Azure blog. However Microsoft Taiwan announced that the island nation will get the Azure region and become Microsoft’s Asian operations centre for all things …

[Anonymous Coward]

Taipower is nationally owned which dominates perhaps 99% of Taiwan power supply. It charges household customers with absurdly low fee and charges enterprise customers even lower.

Last time when Google decided to build its "Asia Data Center" in Chang Hua County, the municipal head was so excited that he expected "Google's data center will create huge job vacancies and build large IT ecosystem in my county". It turned out that Google does employ 35 workers in total. I can imagine that Google also gives each of them a screwdriver and skateboard so that these high tech IT experts can swap broken hardware with spare parts 24/7/365.

One thing outsiders can never know is how much cheaper the electricity rate Google, AWS, and M$ have acquired/will acquire from Taipower.

Because of the nature of business secrets between Taipower and these profiteers, outsiders also have no idea what penalties Taipower will receive from the latter in case of sudden power outage.

[amanfromMars 1]

Thanks Microsoft. Your Azure Blue Skies Thinking is Great for Stealthy AI Tinkering

Was there ever a more conveniently placed Oriental Trojan Horse than Taiwan for Overwhelming and Overtaking American Westernised Sources?

[TVU]

"...will get the Azure region and become Microsoft’s Asian operations centre for all things cloud"

Well, it is safe to say that this news will not please the current harsh autocracy on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. It's actually quite sad really because under the previous leader, Hu Jintao, China seemed to be going in a much more positive direction.