Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced plans to open a second infrastructure region in Australia.
Scheduled to open in the second half of 2022, the new AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region will consist of three availability zones at launch. These will join the existing 25 availability zones in eight AWS regions across Asia Pacific in Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
Globally, 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, in addition to the new region in Australia.
Amazon Web Services launched an Australian region in 2012[1].
"Since then, we've worked with hundreds of thousands of customers in Australia to accelerate their digital transformation from startups such as Canva and Atlassian to enterprises including Kmart and Telstra, and public sector agencies such as the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Statistics," AWS Australia and New Zealand managing director Adam Beavis said.
"They've all built and developed some incredible products and services."
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Beavis said in the past decade, Amazon has invested AU$3 billion in Australia including into infrastructure and its local workforce, which now sits at around 3,000 employees.
"The opening of the AWS Melbourne region demonstrates our ongoing commitment to Australia and the long-term potential we believe there is for our nation to be a leader in the digital economy," he added.
Speaking with ZDNet about the new region, AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr said it would give customers additional flexibility and choice. He said the new region will be targeted at the company's entire range of customers.
"We have wonderful customers in all across Australia