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Thailand is emerging as one of Asia’s most important digital hubs. Fuelled by large-scale investments in data centres, cloud regions, and network infrastructure, the country is becoming a central link between Southeast Asia and global markets. Recognising this, Console Connect, PCCW Global’s Network-as-a-Service platform, has expanded its footprint by enabling 13 new data centre locations across Thailand, bringing the total to 16 nationwide.

South Africa has cemented itself as Africa’s biggest cloud hub, with Johannesburg emerging as a key centre for cloud connectivity in the country. It has seen significant investment from the three major hyperscalers - AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud - all of which have a local presence in Johannesburg. This makes the city a strategic launchpad for cloud services, AI innovation, and digital transformation across the African region.

In this ecosystem update, we share details of 11 new data centre locations now available on the Console Connect platform, along with new global on-ramps across the ''big three'' cloud providers. Across the U.S., we’ve expanded our footprint in New Jersey, Florida, Utah, and Ohio, giving you access to more local data centres with ultra low-latency connectivity.

Console Connect has expanded its global footprint with five additional Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute locations, bringing the total to 16 locations worldwide. This significant growth gives customers even more options to directly and securely connect to Azure from strategic data centre hubs in key international markets.

Adopting a multi-cloud strategy is common for many businesses as it promises flexibility in managing their data. However, this isn’t without complexity especially when it comes to networking. In a recent podcast episode, Trent Blakely and Jay Turner unpacked some of the most frequently missed challenges that come with multi-cloud deployments.

In a previous blog, we explored how Console Connect is accelerating and simplifying cloud connectivity for AWS customers. Now, we’ll take a closer look at how this works within the Console Connect platform, highlighting key features and deployment steps.

Across the Asia Pacific region significant investment is going into new subsea cable infrastructure that will help sustain the long-term demand for AI. We’ve written a lot on this blog about the impact of AI on networks and how AI workloads require low latency, high-capacity data transfer. This in turn puts more pressure on existing network infrastructure and in particular subsea cable systems - which provide the global backbone for cloud platforms and data centres.

In today’s always-on, cloud-first world, it’s no surprise that enterprises are demanding greater reliability, stronger security, and faster performance from their network infrastructure. AWS meets these needs with AWS Direct Connect, offering a dedicated, private connection to AWS that bypasses the public internet.

In this employee spotlight blog, Shaheen Kalla, Presales Team Lead, explores what the future of AI in networking may hold and the possibilities it presents. So much has been written about AI in the context of software engineering, machine learning, and data manipulation - especially where large datasets are involved. However, very little has been explored when it comes to AI from a networking perspective.

The rapid advancement of generative AI has brought with it new challenges and complexities - particularly when it comes to networking. As organisations globally rush to leverage large language models (LLMs) to transform their operations, it’s imperative to understand that AI isn’t just about algorithms and data science, it’s also about the network that underpins it all.