Indosat & Google Cloud join forces for sovereign cloud in Indonesia

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Group (IOH) and Google Cloud have revealed an extended partnership to provide advanced sovereign cloud and edge cloud services in Indonesia, adhering to the nation's strictest data residency, security, and privacy standards.

The collaboration outlines a plan where IOH will offer Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) in Indonesia. The initiative is designed to cater to organisations aiming to manage AI and data-intensive tasks at their preferred locations. This strategic move is positioned to benefit Indonesia's public sector and key industries such as defence, healthcare, financial services, energy, and manufacturing. According to the organisations, the goal is to drive digital transformation through state-of-the-art AI and analytics capabilities, while maintaining stringent control over sensitive data.

As part of the agreement, IOH, through its data centre divisions, intends to provide on-premises hosting options for GDC. This would ensure that data remains under the control of customers and within Indonesia's legal boundaries, meeting all sovereignty frameworks including the Personal Data Protection Law and Government Regulation No. 71.

Vikram Sinha, President Director and Chief Executive Officer of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Group, commented on the development, stating, "Indonesia is paving the way towards its golden era in 2045. Indosat Group is committed to contributing through technological advancements in pursuit of this vision. The partnership with Google Cloud is driven by empowering Indonesia, aiming to deliver the country's first sovereign cloud and edge cloud solutions. These solutions will equip organisations with the state-of-the-art infrastructure, operational features, and developer tools they need to accelerate digitalization at scale."

The GDC solution is described as a fully managed service with a comprehensive suite of software options, a variety of extensible hardware forms, and the potential to operate either air-gapped (completely isolated from the public internet) for highly sensitive workloads or connected between edge locations and Google Cloud's Indonesian region.

Through GDC, organisations are expected to access key features of Vertex AI, Google Cloud's enterprise AI platform. These capabilities include the ability to develop and launch advanced machine learning (ML) and generative AI search applications, allowing for efficient data retrieval and analysis at chosen locations. Furthermore, out-of-the-box access to pre-trained ML models for functions such as Speech-to-Text, translation, and optical character recognition (OCR), supporting over 100 languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, will be included.

Organisations can also leverage the broader array of Google Cloud hardware and software resources crucial for deploying AI applications in isolated or edge environments. This includes the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs, the portable AlloyDB Omni database engine, and Dataproc for running open-source data analytics.

Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive Officer of Google Cloud, commented on the partnership, stating, "Indonesia's public sector and regulated industries require solutions that meet strict data sovereignty and regulatory requirements. Our partnership with Indosat Group will introduce next-generation, local sovereign cloud and edge cloud solutions to empower public sector and regulated organisations to accelerate digital transformation on their own terms. Our leading AI services and secure-by-design distributed cloud infrastructure, combined with Indosat's technology expertise, will help businesses better analyse data, uncover insights, boost productivity, and run modern AI applications."

The announcement underscores a significant step in enhancing Indonesia's cloud infrastructure capabilities, aiming to foster digital growth across key sectors while conforming to pressing regulatory standards. Both companies emphasize that the partnership is in alignment with Indonesia's long-term objectives, particularly as the country aspires to achieve significant technological advancements by 2045.