Dell is looking to open 20 new facilities to power private and public cloud services throughout the Asia Pacific-Japan region. The company says that the driver behind the initiative is demand from customers based in the region, mainly China and India, which is why the first data center will likely be located in the latter nation.

“Dell plans to set up over 20 data centers in Asia to meet growing demand from customers for a mix of private and public clouds,” the head of the company’s Asia Pacific and Japan region said Amit Midha, Dell’s president for APJ.

“The company’s first data center in the region is likely to come up in India for customers in the country” he goes on. “The pace of investment in these data centers will depend on the growth in demand, and the need for clearances in some countries including China.”

The reasons Dell will be starting up the cloud centers locally include cost, which will be considerably lower, and data restrictions imposed by some of the governments in the region. India in particular has stressed its demand for transparency on foreign IT firms such as RIM, which at some point faced an ultimatum to open up messages sent via the default BlackBerry client.

Going back to Dell, the company is seeking expansion in emerging markets – both regional ones, and new industries; specifically, the cloud.  Software-as-a-service will play a key role in the hardware maker’s vision, and an executive recently cited plans of creating an entire cloud app portfolio for businesses stretching from SMB management to analytics. Competitor HP is also getting into the cloud scene, with an upcoming AWS competitor that’s designed to appeal to developers.