Trend Micro has announced the launch of its first Australian Cloud One regional data centre in Sydney.

The launch means all of Trend Micro's SaaS services are now locally hosted in Australia in an Amazon Web Services data centre.

Speaking to ZDNet, Trend Micro ANZ VP Ashley Watkins explained the move would better serve local customers, especially government and ASX100 companies that are bound by strict compliance and data sovereignty policies.

"What has become clear is that our customers love our Cloud One product, but what was really clear about that feedback was, we want it to also be able to have it locally please because we are governed by requirements, be they regulatory, be they be policy-based requirements ... so we're really answering the call of our customers," he said.

At the same time, Watkins acknowledged the decision to host its services locally was timely given the increase in digital transformation projects across Australia.

Trend Micro SaaS services offered to Australian companies historically have been stored in the United States.

The launch of its first Sydney region is expected to be one of many globally for Trend Micro, including "several" across Asia-Pacific. 

The last time the security giant invested in the Australian market was when it picked up the Australian-based cloud security posture management firm Cloud Conformity for$70 million in 2019.

At the time, the company touted the move would help address commonly overlooked security issues caused by cloud infrastructure misconfigurations.

As part of the acquisition, all Cloud Conformity staff joined the company, which Watkins has now since grown.

"We've retained [all the staff] and we've now more than tripled the Conformity team, from R&D to services. It's a huge space globally for Trend Micro that has been running that business out of Australia," he said.

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