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Asia In Brief Singapore-based superapp Grab has a client for its maps-as-a-service venture, GrabMaps: Amazon Web Services.
The cloud colossus has added GrabMaps as an option to the Amazon Location Service that allows developers to add geospatial data and location functionality to applications.
« Amazon Location Service adds a new data source in Southeast Asia, GrabMaps, offering maps, search, and routing, » said AWS. « Developers building applications in Southeast Asia can display their data on local up-to-date maps, use search boxes to locate end-user addresses and points of interest, and calculate routes using real-time traffic conditions. »
According to the Amazon Location Service developer guide the maps are only available in the Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region and cover eight countries: Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Cambodia.
The maps of the eight countries offer routing for cars and motorcycles. Seven cities within the countries also have bicycle and walking routes.
Grab credits the success of its food and grocery delivery services to its documentation of the last mile of a journey, which in Southeast Asia is often most easily achieved on two wheels instead of four. Grab announced last June that it would share its mapping efforts with others – for a fee of course.
At the time the company said it would license map data with places, roads, traffic and imagery, and offer a suite of AI-powered map making services described as an « end-to-end stack that enterprise companies can leverage to build their own apps. » Grab said by 2023 APIs and mobile software development kits (SDKs) would be available for developers.
The company has been quiet since the reveal about potential or committed customers, only saying it was being trialled by « several of the largest technology companies. »
Now we know AWS was one of those companies.
Alibaba Cloud last week announced an « international product innovation center and partner management center » in Singapore.
The innovation facility is its first overseas effort of this kind.
« The new Product Innovation Center will help facilitate future roadmaps for developing more market-specific solutions, and will oversee the management of product upgrades based on ongoing global customer demands, » the biz declared in a canned statement.
The partner management center will « delve into local collaborations to deepen the sharing of leading technologies and domain expertise amongst partners. »
While those quotes are anodyne corp-speak, they are significant for revealing that Alibaba Cloud’s growth ambitions have seen it invest in localizsation of products and services.
