AWS to invest $8.9 billion across its regions in Australia by 2027

Within months of adding a second region in Melbourne, Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Tuesday said it would invest $8.93 billion (AU$13.2 billion) to spruce up infrastructure across its cloud regions in Australia through 2027.

The majority share of the investment, about $7.45 billion, will be invested in the company’s cloud region in Sydney through the defined time period. The remaining $1.49 billion will be used to expand data center infrastructure in Melbourne, the company said.

The $8.93 billion investment includes a $495 million investment in network infrastructure to extend AWS cloud and edge infrastructure across Australia, including partnerships with telecom partners to facilitate high-speed fiber connectivity between Availability Zones, AWS said.

AWS infrastructure in Australia

AWS infrastructure in Australia includes two cloud regions each with three availability zones, one local zone, four CloudFront locations and two AWS Direct Connect locations.

AWS regions are composed of availability zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations.

Local zones, on the other hand, are infrastructure deployment that provides compute, storage, and database services to a large population or industrial centers.

In addition to the local zone in Perth, the company is expected to soon launch a second local zone in Brisbane. The Direct Connect infrastructure, according to the company, is located in Victoria and New South Wales.

In January, the cloud services provider while launching the Melbourne region said it planned to invest an additional $4.5 billion in Australia by 2037, which would support 2,500 new jobs.

AWS, which started operations in Australia with the launch of the Sydney region in 2012, said it has invested approximately $6.18 billion (AU$9.1 billion) through 2022 in the country.

“This includes both capital and operating expenditures associated with constructing, operating, and maintaining the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) region. AWS estimates that the overall contribution of this investment to Australia’s total GDP is AU$19.2 billion,” the company said citing a report.

AWS’ investment through 2022, according to the company, has supported around 5,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs annually.

The investment is estimated to contribute $23.7 billion to Australia’s total gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027 and support an estimated 11,000 FTE jobs, the company said citing an economic impact study.

AWS continues to invest in data centers

AWS’ most recently opened cloud region in Melbourne is the company’s 12^th cloud region in Asia Pacific, joining existing regions in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Osaka, Jakarta, Hyderabad, Sydney, Beijing, and Ningxia.

Currently, AWS has 99 availability zones across 31 geographic regions, with plans to add 12 more availability zones and four more AWS regions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand.

In November last year, the company launched its second region in India with a $4.4 billion commitment.

The company also has confirmed plans to invest $35 billion in Virginia by 2040, expanding its US-EAST-1 region by establishing multiple data center campuses across the state, and creating 1,000 new jobs.