Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to open a second infrastructure region in Australia in the second half of 2022. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region, which will consist of three Availability Zones (AZs) at launch, will join the existing 25 Availability Zones in eight AWS Regions across Asia Pacific in Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
AWS has 77 Availability Zones across 24 geographic regions, with plans to launch 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the new region in Australia. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region will enable even more developers, start-ups, and enterprises as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations to run their applications and serve end users from data centres located in Australia.
“Over the last decade, customers in Australia have relied upon the cloud to transform businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies, and with another AWS Region coming to Asia Pacific, we look forward to helping accelerate these transformations,” said Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, AWS.
“Together with our AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, we’re providing customers with more flexibility and choice, while allowing them to architect their infrastructure for even greater fault tolerance, resiliency, and availability across geographic locations.”
AWS Regions are comprised of Availability Zones, which are technology infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault tolerance.
The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region will provide customers with even lower latency across the country. Additionally, Australian customers, from start-ups to enterprises and the public sector, will have additional infrastructure to leverage advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud with the broadest and deepest suite of cloud services including compute, storage, analytics, artificial intelligence, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, mobile services, serverless, and more to drive innovation.
Customers in Australia also benefit from Amazon’s continued investment in its global backbone through the Hawaiki Submarine Cable, a 15,000- kilometre transpacific cable system operational since 2018 that provides a low-latency and high-bandwidth connection from Australia to New Zealand and the United States.
“We welcome the investment of one of the world’s leading tech companies into Melbourne – the new AWS Region will draw on our highly skilled talent, culture of innovation, and renowned capabilities in growing employment fields such as cloud computing,” said Tim Pallas, Victorian Minister for Economic Development.
“Attracting companies like AWS will not only strengthen our world-leading tech reputation but contribute to our economic recovery.”
Hundreds of thousands of active customers use AWS services in Australia each month to accelerate innovation, increase agility, and drive cost savings. This includes the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Woodside, David Jones, Network Ten, Australia Post, National Australia Bank (NAB), The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Kmart Group, Origin Energy, Telstra, Qantas, Atlassian, Canva, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Siteminder, Realestate.com.au, Afterpay, Xero, David Jones, Myer, SEEK, Australia Post, and Swinburne University, among many others.
The AWS Partner Network (APN) includes tens of thousands of Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and Systems Integrators (SI) around the world. AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN helps by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support. SI Consulting Partners supporting enterprise and public sector customers migrating to AWS include Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, Versent, Wipro, DXC, TCS and many others.
AWS ISVs in Australia including Atlassian, Faethm, Whispir, Max Kelsen, Contino, and many others are already using AWS to deliver their software to customers around the world and intend to serve their Australian customers from the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region at launch.
Amazon Continued Investment in Australia
The new AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region demonstrates Amazon’s continuing investment in Australia. Over the last decade, Amazon has invested more than AUD $3 billion in Australia, including infrastructure and compensation. In 2012, Amazon established its first infrastructure in Australia, launching the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region followed by Amazon CloudFront Points of Presence infrastructure in Sydney, Melbourne (July 2014), and Perth (January 2018).
Amazon currently has four fulfilment centres (FCs) in Australia Dandenong South, Melbourne, (December 2017); Moorebank, Sydney (August 2018); Perth’s Airport Precinct (November 2019); and its most recent in Lytton, Brisbane (June 2020). This year Amazon opened 10 logistics sites in Australia across Sydney (4), Melbourne (4), Brisbane (1) and Perth (1). Amazon also announced a second Melbourne FC in Ravenhall and Australia’s first Amazon Robotics FC.
Amazon is also continuing to invest in the upskilling of local developers, students, and the next generation of IT leaders in Australia through programs such as AWS re/Start, AWS Academy, and AWS Educate. AWS re/Start is a digital skills training program that prepares unemployed, underemployed, and transitioning individuals for careers in cloud computing and connects students to potential employers. AWS Academy provides higher education institutions with a free, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students to pursue industry-recognised certifications and in-demand cloud jobs. AWS Educate provides student access to AWS services and content designed to build knowledge and skills in cloud computing.
