AWS expands SEA footprint with a cloud region and US$6 billion investment in Malaysia

• The upcoming AWS cloud region in Malaysia closely follows the launch of Thailand’s cloud region in Bangkok last year.
• It reflects AWS’s commitment to meeting the high demand for cloud services in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.
• AWS has earmarked an investment of US$6 billion (RM25.5 billion) for Malaysia in the next 14 years.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon.com, Inc., will launch a new cloud region in Malaysia, expanding its footprint in the Southeast Asian region. The cloud giant is also committed to investing US$6 billion (RM25.5 billion) in Malaysia in the next 14 years to keep up with the rapid adoption of cloud services while meeting the data residency requirements of local customers.

The move came four months after AWS announced a similar move in Bangkok, Thailand. However, the cloud firm did not disclose a launch date for Malaysia’s cloud region. “We plan to invest at least US$6 Billion in Malaysia by 2037,” AWS regional managing director for the worldwide public sector in Asean Eric Conrad shared, adding that many organizations in Malaysia are already using the existing AWS Regions.

The companies include enterprise and public sector organizations such as Axiata Group, PayNet, PETRONAS, Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Cybersecurity Malaysia, Department of Statistics Malaysia, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, and Pos Malaysia, and startups like CARSOME and StoreHub.

“AWS has committed to the largest international technology investment to date in Malaysia, which will advance our Malaysia Madani vision of a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, and sustainable economy,” said Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Prime Minister of Malaysia said, in his virtual address during the announcement.

Conrad shared that the upcoming Region in Malaysia will consist of three availability zones, adding to the existing 99 availability zones across 31 geographic regions worldwide. AWS also announced plans to launch 15 more availability zones and five more regions, including Canada, New Zealand, Thailand, and Malaysia.

“We chose Malaysia because our customers are telling us that they need and want additional infrastructure to support their needs, and we determined this is the right time to invest in this infrastructure here,” Conrad told the press in a briefing after the announcement.

AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones, which position infrastructure in distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event affecting customers’ business continuity. These locations are also positioned close enough to provide low latency for high-availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones.

Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones and across multiple Regions to achieve even greater fault tolerance.

“Customers from startups to enterprises to government organizations and nonprofits will be able to use advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud to drive innovation. AWS offers the broadest and deepest portfolio of services, including analytics, computing, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, mobile services, storage, and other cloud technologies,” AWS said in a statement.

Besides Thailand and Malaysia, AWS has a cloud region in Singapore, its first presence in Asia. Singapore’s cloud region, established in 2010, was AWS’ first expansion outside of the US and Europe, enabling businesses to deploy compute and storage resources close to their end-users in the region. Up till 2022, AWS has invested US$6.5 billion in local infrastructure and jobs across the city-state.

---

---

---