Google announced that it will spend $300 million on a new data center in Hong Kong which will be operation by 2013.

“We’re working as quickly as we can to get this facility operational so we can keep up with rapid growth in capacity demand across the region,” Simon Chang, head of Google’s hardware operations in Asia, said in the statement.

Data centers are secured facilities that house thousands of computers capable of storing and serving vast amounts of information–a key aspect of Google’s business, and one that’s of growing importance for the broader tech industry, including Google’s closest rivals.

Google currently has  six data centers in the United States, two in Europe and the Hong Kong data canter will be the first in Asia.  Google also plans on putting up data centers in Taiwan and Singapore.

It’s important for Google to expand its data centers in Asia as this market continues to expand, especially on the mobile front.  Mobile access to data is driving demand for storage and backup services, as well as the need for geographically diverse data centers around the world.

Many others, including IBM, are working on their Asia strategies for data centers, while others are merely making their way “outward.”  Nirvanix is one of the most recent to open a new data center, this one in Hawaii. Facebook and Apple are also steadily building out their data centers, some even with green efforts in mind.