Amazon Web Services has launched its second Australian cloud infrastructure region more than ten years after its first. This is expected to add an estimated $16 billion to the country’s gross domestic product over the next 15 years.
The global cloud giant announced the opening of the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region on Tuesday morning, bringing much-needed latency and resilience improvements to customers in the eastern states.
Customers who want data residency can also choose to store their data in Australia, as the federal government continues to consider local data storage requirements to improve the security of sensitive data.
The Melbourne Region joins AWS’s existing Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, which has been serving customers in Australia since November 2012. Like the Sydney region, the Melbourne region will consist of his three Availability Zones.
The arrival of Regions comes two years after AWS first announced its plans. When the plans were announced, the company said it expected the area to be operational in the second half of 2022.
AWS plans to invest $6.8 million in this project between 2022 and 2037. This includes building, connecting, operating and maintaining the required data centers in the Melbourne area. Along the way, he also supports over 2,500 jobs in his chain of data center supplies.
According to an economic impact study conducted by AWS, the investment is expected to add $15.9 billion to Australia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during that time. This also includes the ‘ripple effect’ that the Melbourne area experiences in the Victorian cloud he ecosystem.
Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of infrastructure services at AWS, said the company is “promoting local job creation, building cloud skills, creating growth opportunities, and working with local customers and AWS partners. We are proud to deepen our investment in Australia.” .
“Australia has a strong history of technological innovation and the opening of our second AWS Region in Australia will further improve our resilience, allowing more customers to develop cloud-based applications and expand our reach across the country. We will be able to promote economic development.”
ANZ Bank is an AWS customer headquartered in Melbourne and plans to start using the Melbourne region soon to improve their customer experience and accelerate their move to the cloud.
Gerard Florian, Group Executive, Technology, ANZ Bank, said:
Other local users welcoming the arrival of the Melbourne area include RMIT, digital asset exchange platform PEXA, and fintech startup Littlepay, which enables contactless payments on buses.
Victoria’s Trade Minister Tim Pallas said that giving Victorian businesses “more choice” for secure cloud infrastructure would ultimately “boost the economy, support innovation and create new local jobs.” It helps create a
Earlier this month, AWS also launched its first Australian Local Zone in Western Australia, promising similar latency improvements for West Coast customers. The company plans to add a local zone in Brisbane by February 2024.
Amazon, the parent company of AWS, is expected to furlough more than 18,000 employees (about 6% of the retailer’s global corporate workforce) in the coming weeks. The impact on Amazon’s Australian operations remains unclear.
Amazon plans to open a new combined AWS and Amazon office in Melbourne in the second half of 2023.
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