MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian internet firm Yandex plans to launch its cloud business in Germany in 2022, with an initial investment of $30 million, the company said ahead of its annual Yandex.Scale cloud conference on Friday.
Yandex.Cloud’s revenue is seen tripling to around 3 billion roubles in 2021 but, having launched in 2018, it remains one of Yandex’s smaller business lines. Group revenue for 2021 is seen at between 330 and 340 billion roubles.
“This is a very important step. We realise that we cannot be a significant global player on the cloud platform market by operating only in Russia,” said Yandex.Cloud COO Oleg Koverznev.
Yandex.Cloud has about 12,400 company clients. Koverznev said around 40 clients had said they were interested in Yandex offering cloud services in Germany, which was enough for the company to make the initial investment.
Yandex said it would not yet build its own data centre in Germany, using commercial platforms instead.
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
