Amazon is opening cloud regions in Southeast Asia to meet customer demand, says CTO

the amazon Amazon is opening cloud regions in Southeast Asia as customers want their data stored safely in their own countries, Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels said in an exclusive interview.

“The reason is that many of our customers are asking for it. They really want something local so they can meet local data storage requirements or protect personally identifiable information,” Vogels told CNBC’s JP Ong.

Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing unit, was the world’s largest provider of cloud services in the fourth quarter, accounting for 31% of total cloud spending. February 26 Report from Canales.

An AWS Region is the physical location of a data center cluster. Each AWS Region has at least three independent Availability Zones. Each zone has its own power, cooling and physical security and is connected by a redundant, ultra-low latency network.

“It’s not just startups that are looking for it. It’s also big business and government agencies. You can imagine government agencies also want to go through digital transformation,” Vogels said.

“It’s important for them to have this kind of technology locally to make sure they can provide the best service to their customers or citizens,” Vogels said.

In November Amazon launched a new AWS region in Malaysia this year. It has pledged to invest 25.5 billion Malaysian ringgit ($6 billion) by 2037 to support the government’s ambition to transform Malaysia into a “high-income” digital economy by 2030.

“This new AWS region will enable customers with data residency preferences to securely store data in Malaysia, helping customers achieve lower latency and meet demand for cloud services across Southeast Asia,” the statement said.

After this AWS opened cloud regions in Indonesia in December 2021 and 2010 in Singapore. AWS also planned to launch an infrastructure region in Thailand.

AWS is already operating in multiple regions across North America, South America, Europe, China, Asia Pacific, South Africa, and the Middle East.

“Certainly, especially with the security capabilities that AWS has, it allows us to protect these customers. Safety is and always will be our number one priority. This is our No. 1 area of ​​investment,” said Vogels.

“Being able to keep customers safe in our computing region is very attractive to companies and governments in the region.”