Amazon has announced the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region, investing in an infrastructure region in the country to give customers more freedom of choice.

The new Region hopes to enable customers to benefit more from AWS’s reliable cloud infrastructure, while also supporting New Zealand as a global sustainability leader.

The technology giant is planning to invest more than NZ$7.5 billion (US$4.4 billion) and support an average of more than 1,000 full-time equivalent jobs annually across New Zealand. This hopes to add roughly NZ$10.8 billion to the country’s GDP.

Speaking on the announcement, AWS CEO Matt Garman shared on LinkedIn: “Our investment goes beyond infrastructure: we’re building New Zealand’s digital future by training the next generation of tech talent.

“We’ve already trained 50,000+ people with cloud skills and we are just getting started. This Region launch is the latest step in our journey to put cloud infrastructure wherever customers need it.”

Supporting digital infrastructure growth across APAC

As part of these plans, customers will have more choice to run workloads securely and securely store their content in New Zealand, while also being able to serve end users with even lower latency.

Active AWS customers in New Zealand include the likes of AMP New Zealand, Kiwibank, Ministry of Transport, New Zealand Post, One New Zealand, TVNZ, University of Auckland and more.

The new AWS Region will also see Amazon investing to support the construction, connection, operation and maintenance of its data centres in the country.

“The new AWS Region in New Zealand will help serve the growing demand for cloud services across the country and empower organizations of all sizes to accelerate their digital transformation,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “With this launch, businesses can now leverage advanced AWS technologies, from core cloud capabilities to AI and machine learning, all while meeting local data residency requirements.

“By investing in New Zealand’s digital infrastructure, we’re proud to support the country’s economic growth, foster innovation, and help position it as a technology hub in the Asia Pacific region.”

The new AWS Region consists of three Availability Zones at its launch, which brings the total of AWS Availability Zones to 120 across 38 AWS Regions worldwide. AWS also has plans for 10 additional Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Chile, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

The AWS Region in New Zealand is sovereign-by-design, the company says and stands to offer a broad portfolio of services – including analytics, compute, content delivery, database, generative AI (Gen AI), machine learning, networking and storage, among other capabilities.

Charting AWS’s expansion across APAC

AWS has been committed to APAC growth for some time, having invested heavily in bolstering AI and cloud adoption in the region.

To maintain this growth trajectory, Amazon is continuing to invest in upskilling students, local developers and technical professionals to foster the next generation of IT leaders. Particularly in New Zealand, the tech giant will be offering AWS Academy, AWS Educate and AWS Skill Builder.

Having agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government of New Zealand, Amazon has committed to train 100,000 people across the country in cloud skills, having already provided training to more than 50,000 individuals.

“The launch of the AWS Region in New Zealand is an exciting moment. This investment in digital infrastructure and Amazon’s commitment to digital skills can accelerate New Zealand technology businesses and help New Zealanders to move into highly skilled, secure and well-paid technology jobs – which exist right across the economy, from tech companies to various sectors including agriculture, finance, retail, professional services, government and many more,” said Graeme Muller, CEO at NZTech.

This agreement builds on previous Amazon investment in New Zealand. In 2016, AWS enhanced New Zealand’s connectivity to the global AWS network by establishing high-capacity subsea cable connections to improve network reliability and performance for customers.

Likewise in 2023, AWS established an AWS Direct Connect location in Auckland to enable customers to establish private connectivity between AWS and their data centre. The company expanded its infrastructure footprint by launching Local Zones in the city to enable customers to deliver applications with less latency.

A commitment to sustainable tech innovation

Having been committed to become a more sustainable business for some time, Amazon is still working towards net zero operations by 2040, as part of The Climate Pledge.

The AWS New Zealand Region will focus heavily on renewable energy, which will be supported by a long-term project with Mercury NZ, an AWS customer, for the Turitea South wind farm. Amazon says the partnership hopes to demonstrate “how digitalisation and decarbonisation can advance together to support a sustainable future for New Zealand”.

AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate geographic locations to offer low latency for high availability applications. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling and physical security, and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

Now, AWS customers that are focused on high availability can design their applications to run across multiple Availability Zones, Amazon says, to achieve greater fault tolerance, particularly as cloud demand continues to surge.

The company has been working to improve energy efficiencies, particularly across its data centres, for some time – improving their design, investing in purpose-built chips and innovating with the latest cooling technologies.

The New Zealand Region ultimately hopes to enable customers drive greater digital transformation with the latest – and most efficient – technologies.

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