Salesforce’s Data Center Expansion in Japan: A Strategic Move?

Last week, Salesforce (CRM) announced the opening of its second data center in Japan (EWJ). This new center will expand and enhance its Intelligent Customer Success Platform, which comprises Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, App Cloud, Community Cloud, and Analytics Cloud. Einstein features are available across all of these clouds.

The newly opened facility could enable Salesforce to expand its customer base in Japan, which boasts a large technology-savvy population. On a broader scale, Salesforce would cater to the growing need of cloud-based services across the Asia-Pacific (FAX) region, which grew the most among geographical areas in fiscal 4Q17. Japan’s first data center was opened in 2011.

Salesforce is not the only company eager to add new data centers. Earlier this month, Amazon (AMZN) announced plans to add new data center facilities in Sweden in 2018. In November 2016, IBM (IBM) announced plans to add four new cloud data centers integrated with cognitive intelligence in the United Kingdom (EWU). Microsoft (MSFT), another strong player in the cloud space, opened data center facilities in Magdeburg and Frankfurt, Germany, in late 2016.

Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and other cloud companies run a huge number of servers, as well as networking and storage, in global data centers. Instead of building their own data centers, companies rely on these cloud providers to rent these resources.

To compete more in the cloud space, Salesforce is adding Einstein features to all of its cloud offerings. Salesforce Einstein is the result of various acquisitions in the AI (artificial intelligence)/ML (machine learning) space.