KUALA LUMPUR: Amazon Web Services (AWS) says it has launched the AWS Asia Pacific data centre in Malaysia to help local businesses and organisations run their applications closer to home and serve their users more efficiently.
As part of its long-term commitment, AWS is planning to invest an estimated US$6.2 billion (about RM29.2 billion) in Malaysia through 2038.
The construction and operation of the new AWS data centre is estimated to add anout US$12.1 billion (RM57.3 billion) to Malaysia's gross domestic product (GDP).
It will also support an average of more than 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs at external businesses annually through 2038, AWS said in a statement today.
These jobs - including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and others within the country's broader economy - will be part of the AWS supply chain in Malaysia.
Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said the launch of an AWS infrastructure data centre here provides access to new and emerging technology for Malaysian entities and businesses of all sizes, boosting the country's capabilities for digital innovation.
"This milestone is a significant step towards fulfilling the vision of Malaysia's New Industrial Master Plan (NIMP) 2030 to build a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable economy," he said in the statement.
"We recognise the transformative power of digitalisation, cloud computing and AI as key drivers in Malaysia's effort to become a manufacturing and services hub within Asia.
"As the largest investment made by an international technology company in Malaysia, the AWS infrastructure data centre will help ensure Malaysia remains competitive on the global stage," he added.
AWS vice president of infrastructure services Prasad Kalyanaraman said the new AWS data centre in Malaysia enables organisations across Asia Pacific to unlock the full potential of the world's most extensive and reliable cloud.
This will help customers deploy advanced applications with a broad set of AWS technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
"Malaysia's rapidly growing digital economy requires access to secure, resilient, and sustainable cloud infrastructure.
"With today's launch, AWS is proud to support Malaysia's digital transformation and help accelerate its role as a regional hub for AI," he noted.
With the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) data centre, AWS now has 108 availability zones across 34 geographic regions.
The company has also announced plans to add 18 more availability zones and six additional AWS data centres in Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
AWS data centres are composed of availability zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations.
The AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) data centre consists of three availability zones 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.
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 to achieve even greater fault tolerance.