AWS stakes $6.2bn on Malaysia’s cloud prospects

• AWS is investing heavily in its global infrastructure
• It has launched a new ‘Region’ in Malaysia
• The hyperscaler will invest $6.2bn in its Malaysia datacentres during the next 14 years

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the launch of an Infrastructure Region in Malaysia, where the datacentre giant says it plans to invest $6.2bn during the next 14 years (through to 2038). 

It expects the commitment will boost Malaysia’s GDP by $12.1bn and generate an average of 3,500 full-time jobs in construction, facilities management and engineering as part of the AWS supply chain in the country.

AWS arranges its facilities geographically into ‘Regions’ and subdivides its datacentre facilities in each region into ‘Availability Zones’. An Availability Zone (AZ) is one or more discrete datacentres, each of which has independent power, cooling and physical security, and connected via redundant, ultra low-latency data transport network connections. Each Region consists of a minimum of three isolated and physically separate AZs: AWS points out that customers can boost their fault-tolerance by running applications in multiple AZs – the ultra-low latency on the connections between the facilities means the applications are able to interoperate effectively in near real time, so this relatively dense infrastructure coverage is arguably AWS’s big competitive advantage.

The new Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region comprises three AZs “located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, but near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones,” according to the hyperscaler.

“Malaysia’s rapidly growing digital economy requires access to secure, resilient, and sustainable cloud infrastructure,” stated Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “With today’s launch, AWS is proud to support Malaysia’s digital transformation and help accelerate its role as a regional hub for AI.”

The company is expecting continuing high demand for its cloud facilities in Malaysia and across the Asia Pacific generally, where it currently boasts customers such as Bursa Malaysia, CelcomDigi, GX Bank Berhad, PayNet, Petroliam Nasional Berhad and the Department of Broadcasting Malaysia.

The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region means the hyperscaler now has 108 Availability Zones across 34 Regions, with plans to launch a further 18 AZs and six more AWS Regions in Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.  

The AWS announcement comes just months after hyperscaler rival Microsoft announced a $2.2bn investment in Malaysia – see Microsoft bets $2.2bn on Malaysia hub for cloud, AI.

– Ian Scales, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV